Dragonstar Destiny

by David Bischoff

  But for now, he would have to change gears and try to think about how a basic plan of defense, or at least readiness, might be activated.

  With the Council involved it was probably going to be attempted by some idiot-committee.

  Running things by committee had never turned him on. In fact, Phineas had always loathed that kind of crap. With committees you always had all the members falling all over each other to get under the spotlight when something went right, and of course doing a lot of ducking and finger-pointing when things went wrong.

  He would rather make decisions on his own and then stand up for the heat or the praise.

  Which is exactly what he had always done, and the reason he was currently dethroned ...

  Well, that was okay, he thought. What goes around, comes around, and if he had learned anything during his imprisonment aboard the Dragonstar, it was surely patience—and maybe a little humility.

  For the time being, he would be happy to just take up a weapon, like everybody else, and do his part. And he wouldn’t go volunteering for any of their committees, either.

  Just as Mikaela was finishing up on the radio, one of Jakes’s assistants dropped some tyvek fax-sheets on his desk, taking a moment or two to point out a few figures, nodding his head several times as Jakes questioned him. The assistant moved off, Mikaela switched off the radio, and just like that the trio was regarding each other again.

  “Davison and Patrick are coming here, Dr. Jakes, if that’s okay, and we will have an ad hoc emergency session of the Council.”

  “Fine,” said Jakes.

  “In that case,” said Phineas, “I’ll just ad hoc myself out of here.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Mikaela, a bit surprised at him.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back and oil my guns. We’re going to be needing them, I have a feeling.”

  “Don’t you want to listen to the meeting?” she asked.

  “Not really. And I don’t want to get named to any committees, either. Just assign me somewhere, and you can count on me to be there.”

  Mikaela shrugged. “Any preferences?”

  “I guess I could go up to the Temple and wait for Takamura to get through. The entrance up there is also a likely place any other visitors might want to come through,” said Phineas. “Speaking of Takamura, somebody should radio him our latest plans.”

  “We will,” said Mikaela. “Be careful, Phineas. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  “All right. Have a nice meeting, folks, but I’d advise you to keep things short and sweet.”

  He turned to go when Jakes stopped him with a word.

  “Wait,” said the Chief Research Project Director.

  “What’s up?” said Phineas, turning back to see that Jakes had picked up the fax-sheet recently delivered to him.

  “l think you have a right to know this, Phineas,” said Jakes. “I just got back some preliminary data on the amount of stress the ship sustained when jumping out of hyperspace.”

  “Yes ... ?” said Phineas, feeling a cold fist tightening at the base of his stomach.

  Jakes sighed and plopped the sheets to his desktop. “The numbers say this can wouldn’t survive another FTL jump.”

  “What?” said Mikaela, her voice on the edge of an emotional abyss. Her normally radiant features seemed suddenly slack and wan.

  “You mean we’re ... we’re stuck here?” asked Phineas. “No matter what happens?”

  “It looks that way,” said Jakes. “Unless ...”

  “Unless what?” asked Mikaela. _

  “Unless the ship is programmed to automatically take us back. But if that happens,” said Jakes, “it might fold up like a cheap accordion.”

  KATE FOUND HIM sitting in the Temple of the Philosophers. He was alone, facing the metallic panel that had once been a sliding partition which opened into the alien control-section of the Dragonstar. She approached him carefully, so that he would not hear and turn until the last possible instant.

  Centuries ago,. when the Saurians, with their pre-electrical technology, had selected the flat end of the giant cylindrical ship as the site for their Temple, perhaps a precognitive notion led them to actually enclose the hatch within the walls of their edifice. Or maybe the Saurian Priests had discovered the secret of gaining access to the control-section, and never revealed that hidden knowledge.

  Kate did not know, but she found it remarkable, and certainly beyond coincidence, that the Saurians had selected this particular site for their most important of all buildings.

  But seriously now, she had not come up there to contemplate the architecture or the history of the place, had she?

  Kate smiled at the thought and closed the distance between herself and her prey.

  “Hello, Kate,” he said without turning around.

  How the hell did he know it was her? She asked him that very question and he turned, and allowed himself to smile.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Phineas, “but I guess you could say I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. That, and I recognized the sound of your footsteps. You have a short, precise way of walking. I remember taking notice of it when we were on the gangway.”

  He grinned as he sat cradling his weapon. As he neared forty years old, he still looked young and healthy. There was no grey in his sandy-colored hair, and few lines around the corners of his blue eyes. Surprisingly the stress of the past few months had not aged him as she had seen it ravage some men. He must be tough, as advertised, but he certainly could be gentle when he wanted to be.

  “Phineas, I know you haven’t been avoiding me, but I thought we should talk.”

  “I have, though,” he said. “I have been avoiding you. It’s just that the recent turn of events has made it easier for me to appear busy.”

  “All right,” said Kate. “Let’s take it from there. Why, then? You don’t have to, you know? Are you afraid I might try to make things difficult for you?”

  He shrugged. “I really don’t know, Kate. Mikaela seems convinced, though ...”

  “That I might try to cause trouble? Or that I took you to bed the other night?”

  He smiled. “Well, both, I guess.”

  “She’s only half-right, you know.”

  “If you say so.”

  His matter-of-fact attitude irritated her.

  “Phineas, don’t be so constipated! I’m trying to talk seriously with you.”

  “Oh, I know you are,” he said. “It’s just that I’m not sure what I want to say to you, Kate. You’ve got me damned confused right now.”

  “Really?” she said, masking her surprise and excitement at what he could have meant by the word “confused.”

  “Yes,” he continued. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you that l didn’t like what happened last night. I enjoyed the hell out of it! But up until then, I had considered you a good friend. I was just starting to get comfortable thinking of a woman as a friend—instead of some kind of ... of adversary.”

  “That’s how you see most women?” What was he talking about?

  “Well, maybe that’s not the right word,” he said. “But, Jesus, Kate, I always feel like I’m a player in a big game when I’m dealing with women. But with you it had been different ...”

  “ ... until I seduced you?”

  “If that’s what you did ... then yes, until then.”

  “Well, why does that have to change everything?” It was a loaded question, she knew. A bit unfair, perhaps, but she was interested in his reply.

  He stood up, started pacing about the area in front of the sealed door to the control-section. “I don’t know why it changes things—it just does, that’s all.”

  “Phineas, that’s no answer.”

  “It’s the best
one I’ve got. It’s just the way I feel. How else can I describe it?” He paused and the way he looked at her made him appear like a small boy. Helpless and confused. “And to make things worse, you’re probably going to tell me that you’re falling in love with me ...”

  The nerve of him! Kate was instantly angered and shocked by his glib pronouncement. How could he say something like that so easily, so smugly! And then suddenly she found herself analyzing her anger and her indignation, and she knew what he was saying was true.

  And wasn’t that why she was feeling so outraged? Because the truth had a way of hurting like nothing else could? And hadn’t she been intending to tell him how she felt about him and that she really didn’t care how he felt about her or Mikaela or any other woman in his life? She had just wanted to get her feelings out in the open. Isn’t that what she’d been thinking before he stole her thunder?

  Oh yes. It certainly had.

  “What’s the matter?” he said without malice or satire. “Did I say the wrong thing?”

  She could say nothing, and only stared at him.

  “I’m sorry, Kate, if I sounded presumptuous, but I could just feel that you were going to say something like that.”

  “I was,” she said. “In fact, I am. I do think I’m falling in love with you, Phineas.”

  “Oh, Jesus ...”

  And she told him everything. How long the feelings had been brewing ... How it felt to watch him with that little tight-assed blonde, Lindstrom ... How she had been wanting him ever since almost the first night they had met and started planning the documentary about the Dragonstar. She explained how it didn’t matter how he felt about her, and that it just felt better getting her feelings out in the open.

  “It might feel better for you,” he said when she finished, “but what about me?”

  “I would think you’d feel good, flattered and all that.”

  “I think I’m beyond that sort of thing now,’” said Phineas. “No, it’s more like I feel obligated to love you in return. Isn’t that silly?”

  She wasn’t sure if “silly” was the right word. “Absurd” seemed more appropriate.

  “You see, Kate, I’m not sure how I feel about anybody, anymore. Sometimes I even think I still care for Becky! Can you imagine that?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I think I can.” She could feel the pain of being so honest oozing out of him, and she felt sorry for him. It was an incredible thing to see him so vulnerable, especially when he seemed so strong and competent all the time.

  “You can?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yes. We can’t always explain why we feel a certain way. I just wanted you to know what it’s been like for me, knowing you.” She paused, moved closer to him. “I’m scared, Phineas. I try to keep myself busy so I won’t think about the pickle we’re all in, but sometimes I just can’t keep it away. Sometimes I think we’re all going to die out here, and there’s no sense worrying about anything. We’re just finished, that’s all. But if that is true, then I wanted you to at least know how I felt about you ... before it’s all over.”

  “We’ve got a long way to go before it’s over, Kate.”

  “You might believe that. I’m not so sure. We’re headed toward a planet now, and I think that’s the place where everything works itself out ...”

  “I’m not giving up hope until there is no hope,” he said.

  “I wish I could feel that strongly about the whole mess we’re in. But I can’t. And there’s a rumor that the hull’s not strong enough to make a return jump, even if we could get back. It might be true. You were there when Dr. Takamura ran those tests ...”

  She wanted him to confirm or deny the rumors, but they were both distracted from their conversation.

  There was a sound at the entrance to the Temple behind them, and she turned to see Mikaela Lindstrom enter the structure along with several other men and women carrying weapons. There were six Saurians also included in the group. Thesaurus and another Priest, plus four Warriors.

  Mikaela Lindstrom walked over to Phineas silently, with no readable expression on her face. Thesaurus approached, but seemed to sense a need for privacy among the humans, and hung back, waiting to be invited closer. The other humans and Saurians spread themselves out at various guardposts within the Temple.

  “We’ve just attained a stable orbit around the planet,” said Lindstrom, making a point of speaking only to Phineas.

  “What’s it like down there?” he asked. “They been able to get a good look at the planet’s surface?”

  “There isn’t much to see,” said the paleontologist. “One major landmass surrounded by ocean. The terrain is fairly well destroyed by the heat and radiation from the red super-giant.”

  “You mean it’s a dead world?” Phineas sounded disappointed. “You mean we got here too late?”

  “Too late for what?” asked Kate.

  Lindstrom looked at her, but said nothing. Kate could feel the cold aura of jealousy enveloping her like a prison.

  “I don’t know,” said Phineas. “I had a feeling we’d been brought here for a reason.”

  “I, too, have had such feelings,” came the translated words of Thesaurus.

  Phineas looked up and gestured the Saurian Priest to join the small group. The old Saurian reached out and touched Phineas’s shoulder.

  “He wants to be here, in the Temple,” said Lindstrom. “In case there are any new developments.”

  Phineas nodded. “It looks like things are going to be pretty dull.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Thesaurus. “I have entertained a very strong notion—almost a precognition—that we have come to this place to meet our destiny.”

  Phineas grinned and looked at the Saurian. “The way things have been going, I’m not sure I want you to be right or wrong.”

  “Colonel Kemp?” a voice crackled in the headset radio of his LS helmet.

  “Kemp here.”

  “Dr. Jakes wants to inform all the sentry positions,” said the voice on the radio. “We’ve just detected activity on the planet’s surface.”

  “What kind of activity?”

  “Not sure yet, but it looks like three vehicles have been launched.”

  Kate was standing right next to Phineas, and it was impossible not to hear the message. There was a lump in her throat and she couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to.

  But she didn’t have to ask if the vehicles were headed their way ...

  “SO WHAT are we going to do?” asked Rebecca Thalberg at the meeting, her fragrant primeval tea ignored in front of her.

  The other members of the committee sat without contributions, their feelings showing in their eyes. Mishima read them easily; they reflected his own emotions.

  Ships belonging to an intelligent alien life were apparently on their way to dock with Artifact One. The first contact between mankind and a more advanced (at least technologically) race of intelligent aliens. But more important, it was the first contact between the lASA crew and the Makers of the Dragonstar.

  Or at least their distant descendants; millions of years had passed. What had the Makers been; what had they evolved into? How would they deal with the captured prizes?

  These were the questions in the eyes of his crew-mates—but there was also the unspoken fear that had been covered up by activity and the need to stay alive. The fear of the unknown.

  After all, who could blame them? They were light-years away from the security of Earth, traveling along in a hostile environment to God-knows-where. Jakes’s announcement that the frame of the Dragonstar could not withstand the arduous pressures of FTL was not exactly a welcome bit of knowledge. The implications had clearly sunk in quite well. Chances were exceedingly slim that they would ever return to Earth.

  But beyond these fears, survival shone in these eyes like hard diamonds, and t
his perception eased Mishima’s trepidations. Still, there was this little matter of what to do.

  “What is there to do? Wait. Prepare our spirits for this august meeting.”

  “Prepare our spirits!” blurted Phineas Kemp. “What kind of proper military action is that?”

  Mishima had been watching Phineas lately, and had observed him as being under a peculiar pressure. Something to do with females, ah yes. Rats always acted erratically in pressured and enclosed circumstances. Also, he had not quite relinquished his fancied role as leader and decision-maker, despite his sorry past; orders and decisions and evaluations seemed to ejaculate from him like semen from a half-cocked male organ.

  “This is hardly a typical military situation, Phineas,” said Becky. Always eager to take a jab at her ex, Mishima was gratified to see. “We don’t know yet that our visitors are hostile.”

  “Ah, but we don’t know that they are not!” Phineas said. “We must take the proper precautions to defend ourselves.”

  “What’s the use, Phineas?” said Mikaela Lindstrom. “They built this ship eons ago—God alone knows what weapons they have.”

  “No, Colonel Kemp is correct,” said Mishima in a calm, assured voice. “My suggestion for spiritual readiness is inclusive of what he terms ‘military’ readiness. But then, are we not as militarily prepared now as we can ever be?”

  Kemp looked at Mishima with a clear expression of pity. “Position, man. We’ve got to get ourselves in the proper positions!”

  Mishima nodded. “Perhaps. But do you not think, Colonel Kemp, that a formal offensive position might induce the aliens to—how do you say it in your country? —shoot first and ask questions later?”

  The laughter eased the tension in the gathering.

  “Mishima’s right, Phineas,” said Becky. “There’s no reason we can’t just effect a nonthreatening observational attitude. That way we can watch the entry of the aliens without alarming them and be in a suitable position to offer resistance should that be necessary—”