“Easy for you to say,” said Barkham. “For myself, I’m gonna be honest. I’m scared shitless.”
“That’s all right,” said Dr. Jakes. “Somehow, Barkham, I think you’re the sort that functions under any emotional condition. And I must say that I find myself encumbered with the same emotional problem as you.”
Takamura said, “Yes. I think that we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t feel strong fear in this situation.”
“Our wonderful and vaunted human emotions,” said Mikaela.
“But what was it that William Shakespeare said? A coward dies a thousand deaths, but the valiant only one.”
“Well,” said Barkham as the corridor widened out into a room that looked to be an antechamber to a larger area and the air took on a decided charged feeling, “here comes death number seven hundred and twenty-two.”
The walls were filled with all manner of screens and oddly shaped patterns. Controls? wondered Takamura, surveying the painter’s palette of colors. There’d be no time to find out, that was for sure.
Kii turned. “This is the place,” he said. “This is where you must be. I shall secrete myself and make ready. I wish you to cause a disturbance to attract the Enforcer’s attention. He will come out of the control cabin and I will destroy him with my weapon.”
“Disturbance?” said Barkham. “Disturbance? You got a disturbance!”
“Please, not yet!” said Kii. “Wait until I hide myself!”
“Gee,” said Barkham as the big creature lumbered over to a dark corner. “Really highly advanced tactics, here.”
Dr. Jakes shrugged. “I suppose some things will always stay the same!”
Kii disappeared within the darkness.
Takamura gave him a few moments to prepare himself, and then gave the orders: “All right. Let’s have some good old-fashioned Earth-type ruckus!”
“And just be ready to stand out of the way of death rays and other assorted defensive equipment,” Barkham commented, switching the safety off his gun.
They fired into the ceiling. Barkham let rip with a wail and then cried out, “Hey, bubble-brain! Let’s have a look at your ugly face!”
“I don’t think you have to insult it,” said Mikaela.
“Why not?” said Barkham. “Might as well have some fun before it wipes us out.”
“I love your positive attitude,” said Takamura.
“Why doesn’t it just check with its security system? Or robots or something,” Barkham said. “Why is it going to be so stupid and waddle out here on its lonesome?”
“I don’t know,” said Takamura. “Perhaps it has something to do with its sense of honor.”
“You’re anthropomorphizing, surely,” Dr. Jakes said. “Most likely, they generally don’t have to deal with disturbances. It’s simply not going to suspect that Kii’s let us go. Or that there’s any security problem.”
Barkham shrugged. “Well, I’m not going to look a gift Enforcer in the mouth, that’s for sure.”
Then the control quarters door began to cycle open.
Something began to emerge ...
THE RADIATION poured through him like soft sunlight upon a pleasant beach.
No pain, no bad feeling at all. Only a gentle tingle, the softest whisper of sensation penetrating deep into Kemp’s body, his mind ... and seemingly his soul.
Kemp stood stunned for what seemed like a very long time, but was actually only seconds. Beside him, Becky Thalberg seemed to have been immersed in pure bliss. She seemed to accept the touch of the radiation like a disciple accepts a divine ray from the eye of God himself. And in fact, it was pleasurable ... There was the feeling of calm, of unity with the nature of things, with the hint of a coming revelation, like a dawn just beginning to peek over the sill of night.
But it was unlike anything that Colonel Phineas Kemp had ever felt before. It seemed to challenge the very foundations of his existence, shake the very tenets of belief that he viewed existence from:
Don’t struggle, it seemed to say in silent words. Life is not struggle. It is growth and being. It is becoming. And you are its focal point.
Phineas Kemp fought it.
“No!” he cried. “Goddammit, no!”
For a time he seemed to flicker in and out of existence.
And then he became aware of the creature whom Timothy Linden had become, standing in front of him, murmuring, “Don’t fight it! Don’t fight it, Phineas. You’ll destroy yourself. You’ll destroy what is good within you, and you’ll destroy the hope of your people!”
The red fury filled him: the fury of his identity, his character. I am me, he screamed within himself. I am Phineas Kemp!
He stepped forward and began to throttle Linden with his bare hands.
Linden broke the grasp easily. He pushed Kemp back. Kemp stumbled against the wall from which the radiation emanated. And the tingle became almost a burning.
“No!” said, Kemp, picking himself up and stepping forward, hands clamped against his head. “It’s destroying me!”
“Not the real you, Kemp,” said Linden. “The you of delusions. Your true self will blossom.”
“Goddamn you to hell!” Kemp screamed as he dropped down onto his knees. “Goddamn—”
And then he fainted, and the light filled his entire mind to a brimming that blotted out all of him.
There was a time of darkness, curiously dappled and moiled with light and nothingness.
When he awoke, he was lying on his face upon the cold floor. His mouth seemed full of cotton, and a strange scent filled his nostrils: a smell like exotic flowers.
Reality gradually coalesced. There were no more beaming lights, and no more conflict within himself.
He felt very peaceful, but he was more than aware of the crisis that confronted him. Nonetheless, he seemed in perfect control. He knew what had to be done.
He arose.
Becky Thalberg was standing by Linden, who was examining a bank of controls, emblazoned with alien hieroglyphics. Linden pressed a few tabs, ran his hand over a long red plate, and then simply stared at the screen readouts.
Then he turned to Phineas Kemp.
“I thought perhaps there might be a little melodrama with you, Phineas Kemp. But you seem, in truth, to have handled it much better than I did.”
“Of course,” said Kemp in a low voice. “You did have problems, didn’t you?”
“Yes. And only very recently resolved. But then, my particular instance of training and brainwashing was of a much more virulent nature. So how do you feel, Phineas?”
“l feel ... I feel all right.”
“Phineas Kemp is still alive, then?”
Kemp thought about this a moment. He looked at Becky Thalberg, who smiled at him knowingly.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess the old guy is still kicking. Just a little wisened up, I suppose. Sorry about the pyrotechnics. It’s just hard to let go ... of certain things.”
“It was more a matter of trust and surrender,” said Becky. “Trust and surrender in something deeper. And you’ve always found it very difficult to acknowledge that there are deeper things in you, Phineas. You’ve always had to be in control.”
Kemp thought about this. Although a part of him rebelled at the notion, the rest of him agreed that it was indeed so.
“Well, I’m far from in control now,” he said. “Although I must say, I still don’t appreciate the manner in which I was dunked into the baptismal fountain, so to speak.” He glared at Timothy Linden.
“Oh, and I suppose you would have come down here gladly if I told you what was intended?” Linden looked at Kemp mildly.
Kemp thought about this. His first response was to scream at Linden. But then he checked himself.
No, Linden was right. There was no other choice that Linden had had. Still, though, it rankled ... But, it was a very fam
iliar sort of rankling.
A sweep of joy went through Kemp.
He still had his identity! He felt different, certainly, but he still recognized his grouchy old self!
Then suddenly he felt a moment of anxiety.
“Look what you’ve done ... Maybe you’re right, and this will help us, and okay, I understand it’s for the good of all. I don’t know exactly how ... I just know. But what all this means, right, is that pretty soon Becky and I ... we’re going to be incapacitated ... Incapacitated like you were. And then we’ll spin some sort of god-awful cocoons ...”
“Precisely,” said Linden. “Which is why there’s simply no time to waste. We have to get you back to the alien starship immediately.”
Kemp nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
IT WAS BIG, it was nasty-looking, and there was no doubt in Takamura’s mind that it was alien.
The Enforcer came through the door.
There was an obvious genotype relationship here with Kii. That there was a relationship with reptiles there could be no question. The Enforcer had a longer snout than Kii, though, larger and sharper teeth, and thicker-looking hide. Everything about it, from its claws to its feral eyes, spelled aggression and dominance. It even had a tail, which slithered along behind it.
In its long scaly arms was a rod-like weapon similar to what Kii carried.
“God,” said Barkham loudly. “You are an ugly-bastard! I see why you hide yourself in those force-bubbles! I would too!”
The Enforcer fixed his eyes on the humans and it growled. It raised its weapon to fire.
“Shit!” said Barkham. “It’s going to let us have it.” He leveled his own gun and fired a round.
The explosive bullet blew off a section of the Enforcer’s shoulder, splattering the wall behind it with a curious shade of red blood. The Enforcer hissed and bellowed, and its flesh began to change colors, then moved over the wound in a rippling crawl, sealing off the spurt of blood.
The thing stepped back, its eyes filling with hate.
It brought up its weapon again, and Takamura, Jakes, and Barkham aimed and fired.
Holes thunked open in its chest.
The beast staggered back with shock, looking down at its wounds with dismay.
It was that moment that Kii chose to step out from his hiding place.
The alien ally aimed his own rod. Before the Enforcer could do a thing, Kii triggered the rod, and a bright burst of color blasted from its end, instantly connecting with the Enforcer.
The result was profound.
The alien simply seemed to explode in all directions, pieces of charred flesh banging against the walls, its singed blood bucketing onto the floor. Severed limbs spasmed for a moment, then shivered into stillness.
“Whew!” said Barkham. “Old Kii doesn’t fuck around, does he?”
Kii lowered his energy rod and stepped toward the party. “Please, now lower your weapons. The Enforcer has been dealt with.”
“I’ll say,” said Barkham, uneasily eyeing the alien’s remains as they stepped over the closest wave of gore toward Kii. “So what’s next?”
“Next, doubtless, we must negotiate our way to the control-section,” Dr. Jakes said. “And I must say, I can’t wait to take a look at that.”
Kii beckoned them onward, and they followed, stepping gingerly over what was left of the Enforcer through the cycled-open door.
Takamura took in a breath of awe.
The control room was like nothing he’d ever seen before: an expanse of crystal and gemlight and rinded in metal and color and streams of electricity and illuminated rods and screens with incomprehensible readouts. All within a bowl-like enclosure, clearly equipped for use in all kinds of gravities. There was the smell of power in this place.
And the ports, faceted like the eyes of a fly, were filled with stars!
“No way I’m going to be able to know what to do with this lot!” said Dr. Jakes, staring about him with amazement.
“This, in truth, is what I told you,” said Kii. “I believe that I will be able to take care of controlling this craft and taking it and you back to your home planet.”
“Pal,” said Barkham, “if you can do that, I’ll make sure that you’ll be more than welcome in my neck of the woods. I’ll even invite you for dinner.”
“I should be more than glad to accept,” said Kii, “but now I must deal with a few items.”
Quickly the creature scanned the dazzling array of alien equipment. Then it stepped forward and started diddling with them.
“I hope to God it really knows what it’s doing,” Barkham said.
“Considering how much it’s gotten accomplished already, I can’t see how we can do anything else but trust that it will!” said Mikaela. “My goodness, though, this is really quite some control room, though, no?”
“I feel so useless,” said Jakes. “I truly hope that we can escape, if only so that Kii will be able to start explaining to me how all this works!”
“I think there are more important matters involved in the issue, Dr. Jakes,” said Takamura, watching as Kii’s claw-like digits worked over a series of convoluted key-like arrangements as though it were playing a musical instrument. The alien spoke a guttural language into a coil, and strange and subtle transmutations began to take place all along the contours of the controls. Colors washed across the expanse of crystal, seeming to describe, all the moods of the spectrum.
And then, from the middle of all, a blister grew. The crystal in one part of the blister darkened, coalesced, then brightened into an image.
Takamura recognized the hatchway—then he saw the Mesozoic wilderness beyond it. The blister-screen was showing the inside of the Dragonstar!
“Yes,” said Kii, “I believe all is under control. Now watch ... the guard will doubtless come into view any moment.”
They waited and they watched.
Within a matter of seconds, a large force-field ball drifted past the hatchway opening, momentarily blocking part of the scenery. A cascade of sparks crackled down its side: a miniature snap of lightning circumscribed its periphery.
And then it was gone.
“Your power rod sure isn’t going to get to that thing,” said Barkham.
“Yes,” said Mikaela. “It’s still wearing its force-field sphere.”
“Kii, just how are those force-field screens generated?” asked Takamura.
“From a power-pak worn around the midsection of the user.” Kii said, examining the blister-screen thoughtfully.
“So there’s no other outside power?” said Barkham. “Then how long do they last ... the power-paks, I mean.”
“A very long time,” said Kii.
“Hmm. Well, the question, then,” said Barkham, “is how do you crack that particular nut?”
Kii said, “There is a good possibility which I took into account earlier.”
“And that is?” Barkham demanded.
“I have access, of course, to other power-paks. I believe that if the circuitry of one can be changed, it might function as a canceling factor for others in the vicinity. Energy spheres within perhaps a seventy-five meter periphery would be nullified.”
“Hey, that sounds just perfect,” said Barkham. “Let’s get to it, then.”
“Yes. But one of us must be stationed here, equipped with vital essential information on how to maintain control of this room!” said Kii.
“Dr. Jakes is our engineer,” said Takamura, “He’s been heading a study of the mechanisms on the Dragonstar. He’s the one who’s best qualified.”
“It all looks pretty baffling to me,” said Jakes. “But I’m willing to give it a try.”
“Excellent. Come here. This is the main device of control. We must adjust it according to your brain waves, or it will reject your attempts.”
Jake
s walked over to the control board that Kii indicated and they set to work.
* * *
“Here,” said Kii. “This is the force-field bulb generator I described.”
They had moved to another room. Dr. Jakes had remained in the control room, newly equipped with the necessary information to operate certain vital portions of the alien starship.
Kii was pointing to a rack of large ring devices, attached with bulbous fittings and seeming studded with jewels. Energy cells, Kii explained.
He took one from the rack, then carefully opened it up, exposing alien patterns of circuitry. With a small humming device he had procured from the control-section, he began to probe and prod at the interior of the device.
“I sure hope he knows what he’s doing,” said Barkham.
“He appears to,” said Mikaela.
As usual, Thesaurus said nothing, merely watching everything with awe. The Saurian seemed to be absolutely dumbstruck with Kii. He clearly recognized his relationship with the alien—and reacted to it by viewing Kii as a veritable god.
Takamura really couldn’t blame him. Kii certainly did radiate a presence. Fortunately it was a good presence—a feeling of benevolence and trust.
“I just hope that we can do all this in time to save Becky, Kemp, and the others,” said Mikaela.
“Well, if we can’t, we can’t. We’re talking about all of Earth, here. Our whole race. If Becky and Phineas don’t get to us in time, it’s tough cookies for them. They’ll have to stay.”
Although Takamura felt chagrined at the way that Barkham had expressed it, he knew this was the truth. Once they disposed of the guard, they only had a short window on rescuing anybody out there.
After that, they’d have to take off and make their best effort at a run for it.
Kii’s instrument hummed and spat. An occasional spark dropped onto the floor. He made grunting noises that Takamura fancied were noises of concentration.
Finally he closed a compartment and he looked up at his audience. “There. I believe that I have completed the job. Unfortunately there is no way to test it other than to actually use it against the guard.”
Dragonstar Destiny Page 22
