by Mack Maloney
Hunter finally took his eyes off the flags and looked up at Gordon.
"This place, where you think you came from thousands of years ago. Any idea what it might have been called?"
"We are not one hundred percent sure," Gordon replied. "But the consensus over the years has it the place was called America."
America!
It was amazing how the word hit Hunter between the eyes first. Then it went down to his throat. And finally, it got him right in the heart.
America… Yes, he'd heard this word before. He couldn't remember when, and it was certainly before he'd found himself on Fools 6, but it was in his consciousness somewhere, locked away in the memory banks, trying to get out.
America…
He closed his eyes and said it, over and over again.
America…
The flag in his pocket. The colors on his aircraft. The same red, white, and blue. They were all swirling in his head now.
America…
The ancient spacecraft back on Mars. The lighthouse on Zazu-Zazu. Calling him back.
America…
His quest across the Five Arm. To Tonk. Bazooms. Myx. The star road home to…
My God, he thought. America? Is that where I'm from?
He began to choke up but then stopped. True, the people here seemed more like him than anyone else in the Galaxy. But something was telling him the puzzle was not yet complete. He was still a couple of steps away.
Was he from this planet and somehow he'd become stranded on Fools 6 just a year ago? No, he knew immediately that all this was much bigger than that. He was not just from another place, he was obviously from another time as well.
So, could he be from this planet but from a different time in its history?
No, that didn't seem right, either…
So, what was left?
Could he be from somewhere this place was named for?
He actually thought he heard a bell go off in his head.
"Do you think this planet might be a replica of someplace else?" Hunter asked.
Gordon brightened. The other CIA men did, too.
"That's exactly what we want to find out," the CIA chief replied.
They walked about halfway down the length of the vault, where Gordon pulled out another drawer.
"While checking out those UFO sightings last week, we received several reports describing what the unidentified object looked like," Gordon said to Hunter. "Thinking it was probably you, we're very anxious for you to take a look at this."
This glass case contained another collection of papers, again bound together along one side with a spine. There were many words on these pages — almost like a newspaper — but the print was so faint, it was impossible to make them out. One page, though, was partially sealed within a thin plastic sleeve. Inside was a faded, deteriorated photograph. It was so old, the image was barely discernible.
But it was clear enough for Hunter to see one thing: It was a picture of his flying machine. Or something very close to it. Sharp nose, two wings in front, two smaller ones in back, another sticking up out of the tail. It was in flight, fire spilling out of its rear end. And right there on the underside of its wing was a painted-on version of the same red, white, and blue flag.
"Is this a machine like one that you possess?" Gordon asked.
"Let's just say it looks familiar," Hunter replied. "Any idea how old this picture is?"
Gordon shrugged. "Just a guess? At least five thousand years old. I mean, especially that example; it was old when it got here to this world. And like everything else, we can't figure out what it's printed on. It's not indigenous to this planet, though, we are sure of that."
Now this was nutty, Hunter thought. Here was an image, thousands of years old, depicting almost an exact duplicate — at least on the outside — of the aircraft he'd built himself from what he'd always assumed was some kind of lost memory.
There were words beneath the photograph, badly faded text that was barely discernible.
"Any idea what it says?" Hunter asked them.
"Now, that we've worked on for years," Gordon replied. "And as far as we can tell, it says something like 'Thunderbird over Las Vegas.' "
Gordon looked at the three spacemen.
"We know what thunder is," he said. "And Las Vegas is a city out in the western part of our country. But we were wondering: Do you guys happen to know what a bird is?"
The three spacemen shrugged.
"Not a clue," Tomm said.
They closed that drawer and opened another, this one containing more collections of individual pages attached by spines. Again, most of these documents were ancient and deteriorated. But some were not quite as old.
"Here lies documentation of another very strange piece of this puzzle," Gordon said. "It was discovered about one hundred fifty years ago that at certain times throughout our known history, there have been, on occasion, mass disappearances of people. Individuals. Sometimes families. Two or three hundred at a shot, over a two- or three-day span, and then nothing for years. These are the files on the missing. Most of them, anyway. Many witnesses nearby reported strange aerial lights just before these people vanished. The last incident was about thirty years ago. That's when some people supposedly went willingly. Waited on mountaintops for days before finally being picked up. Strange thing too: Many of those who've vanished over the years were policemen."
Hunter looked at Tomm and Zarex. It was a short leap from policeman to soldier. Could this be evidence of the Freedom Brigades?
"Maybe you can enlighten us on that sometime," Gordon suggested. "Because now we have the most intriguing item of all."
They walked to the very end of the vault. There was a door here marked #666. It was different from the rest in that it had additional security devices attached to its door handle. Gordon passed an ID card across this small scanner, and a succession of clicks was the result. Another agent stepped forward and did the same thing. More clicks. One by one, the rest of the CIA men flashed their IDs before the electronic eye. Finally, after the seventh man, the door unlatched and very slowly swung open.
Inside was a drawer that held a box approximately six feet long and four feet around. It was not made of glass. The spacemen recoiled for a moment. It looked like a coffin.
But as Gordon rolled the drawer out, it became clear that the long, slender box was actually a capsule of some kind, made of recarbonated sodium iron, also known as cobalt steel. It was sealed at its midpoint by a complicated-looking lock. A bulky, confusing control panel nearly took up one entire side of the dark box just below this lock. Every light on this panel was blinking, though weakly. There were even a few switches on the control panel. Switches hadn't been in use anywhere in the Galaxy for more than 2,500 years.
"This was found buried inside the deepest mountain on this planet, a top secret location out in our southwest called Groom Lake," Gordon explained. "It was discovered sealed inside a layer of hardened limestone in the sub-subbasement of a structure that had survived all of our periodic catastrophes. We know it's old, or it looks old, but the technology it contains is obviously highly advanced, at least for us. Finding a way to open it has so far eluded us. We believe it is a container of some kind, but we have no idea what is inside. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that over the past fifty years, we've had dozens of scientists take a look at this thing, once they'd passed a hundred or so security checks, that is. They weren't told anything about it or where it came from. We just wanted to know how to open it. But not one of these learned men could figure out a way of breaking that seal without destroying whatever is inside."
He looked at the three space travelers. "Any ideas, gentlemen?"
Zarex studied the control panel but shrugged. It made no sense to him. Hunter also took a pass at it, with the same result.
Finally, Pater Tomm nudged the others aside, took his handy blackjack from his back pocket, and slammed it down on the lock. It sprang open immediately.
&
nbsp; The CIA men were shocked. Hunter and Zarex just shook their heads.
"Well done, Padre," Hunter murmured.
Inside the box was a large spherical capsule, about a foot long and the same again around. It shimmered with a shade of bluish emerald. The CIA men had never seen anything like it. But to the three space travelers, it was quite familiar.
"Could that possibly be what I think it is?" Zarex asked with a gasp.
It was a holo-girl capsule. The shape, the color, the shimmering green. They were all the same. But this one had to be at least ten times larger than the handheld ones the space travelers were familiar with.
Hunter turned to Zarex. "One of yours?" he asked.
Zarex huffed and studied this object's control panel for a moment. This he was schooled in. He very casually pushed a succession of light panels. Suddenly, a beam shot out of the side of the capsule. Everyone took a step back. There was a blinding flash, and then a cloud of deatomizing smoke. A holographic projection began to take shape. The image flickered, appeared solid, then flickered again. When it finally stabilized, they found a rather large female standing before them. She was holding an enormous gun.
The CIA men were shocked, bewildered. That this amazon could so suddenly appear like this — they'd simply never seen anything like it before. It was more like a horror movie for them. A being from the distant past/future, unlocked from a magic box, proceeds to demolecularize them all?
"It's all right," Tomm comforted them. "Some of us see these things all the time."
But the truth was, this was unlike any holo-girl the spacemen had ever encountered. She was much bigger, much more mus-cular, much rowg/ier-looking than the models currently in use throughout the Galaxy. And she wasn't exactly built for speed. She was more along the lines of Zarex's body type. It took the spacemen a few moments to realize that what they were looking at was not a holo-girl at all, at least not the erotic, sexually pleasing ones they knew.
Rather, this female projection was a soldier, clearly made not for sex but for war. Her uniform was bulky; her weapon was huge and ancient-looking. Her combat belt, boots, and helmet all looked like relics of days gone by, most especially the jet pack on her back, a cumbersome two-tube assembly that gave the wearer a certain amount of airborne capability but hadn't been seen in the Milky Way in two millennia at least.
She was staring back at them, a slightly mystified look on her face, eyes darting back and forth, accessing her data banks. She scanned the CIA men first, in their denim and western boots, then the space travelers. She raised her huge rifle in a cautious stance. Everyone froze. Could a holograph's weapon shoot real stuff? No one knew. A tense moment went through the room. Then, as so often happened when no one else knew what to do, Pater Tomm stepped forward.
"You are among friends here," he gently told the skittish projection. "There is no need to harm anyone, because no one is going to harm you."
"Where am I?" she asked them, her voice garbled, mechanical.
Tomm did his best to explain the surroundings to her. She checked a device on her wrist.
"This is the 73rd century!"
Tomm nodded. "By some accounts, it is."
This was news to the CIA agents.
"What year are you from?" Tomm asked her.
The holo-spy replied, "My original program date was in the year 3777. That was 3,500 years ago!"
She paused, gathering her thoughts. Old circuits were coming to life. "I have been programmed to tell you my background before disclosing my mission here… "
She explained that she was a combat-intelligence operative. Her job was to infiltrate enemy installations prior to battle and gather information on them. In essence, she was a spy.
"Does this mean that the holo-girls of today evolved from spy technology centuries ago?" Zarex asked Hunter in a whisper.
"It must be," Hunter whispered back. "They could have created the first holographs to look and feel and talk and walk like a real human being, in an effort to make them blend in. What better spy could there be?"
Tomm was nodding, but with disgust. "And then for man to design one model that could be used for more carnal activities; well it's a concept that really doesn't involve that much of a leap in imagination, does it?"
The projection went down a long list of her abilities: above-normal strength, X-ray vision, instant recall. Of course, everything she saw and heard was recorded on the primitive version of a viz disk. And judging by the size of her muscles, though not designed primarily for combat, she would have had little trouble defending herself.
"Why are you here?" Tomm asked her finally. "Do you know?"
"I was sent here in advance of a combat mission on this planet," she said, eyes again darting back and forth. "I was programmed by a civilization that was allied with your ancestors around the year 3778. Our goal was to help free you, the people of this planet—"
"Free us?" several asked at once.
The holo-girl could see the confusion on the assembled faces. They didn't know what she was talking about.
"Yes, free you? Help you? To break you out of here?"
More confused looks.
"You do know you're incarcerated here?" she asked with some uncertainty.
Everyone in the vault shook their heads no.
"We think our ancestors may have been brought here from someplace else," Gordon managed to say, "But—"
"So you don't know that you're in a prison camp here?"
"Prison camp?" several of the CIA men gasped at once.
"This planet. This whole system," she said. "It's a prison… and you are still here. Even after all this time. You are still inmates."
The CIA men all tried to say something but couldn't. Even the space travelers were at a loss. How could an entire star system be a prison camp?
The holo-spy read their faces and just shook her head.
"I suggest you take me someplace where you can all sit down," she said. "This might take awhile."
14
Twenty-four Hours Later
The black panel van flew through the gates of the White House, waved on by the small army of uniformed secret service agents assembled there.
It was three in the morning. The streets of Washington, D.C., were deserted as usual. Nevertheless, acting under the orders of the CIA, the D.C. police had blocked off all streets within a ten-block radius of the Executive Mansion. Several highways had been sealed as well. In all, the van's ride in from Weather Mountain had taken less than a half hour.
The van pulled around the back of the White House and stopped at the servants' entrance. It was here that the Secret Service's video surveillance cameras could be shut down without anyone noticing. The three passengers were hustled out of the van, each wearing a long, hooded cape. They were followed by Gordon and two of the seven elderly CIA agents.
The spacemen were brought into the White House kitchen and halted there. They were surrounded by yet another breed of well-dressed government agent, the Secret Service's presidential protection team. These guys all wore gray suits. They ran metal detectors over the three travelers and frisked them as well, but they could not find anything. That was another good thing about the Twenty 'n Six boxes. They could be set for intradimensional recovery.
This meant they just weren't there, until the owner reached for them.
The president was awakened and told that some unexpected visitors had arrived and that the CIA was insisting that he meet them — right now.
With some complaint, the Chief Executive rose and got dressed: just slacks, sneakers, and a sweatshirt bearing the presidential seal. He made his way down from the living quarters to the Oval Office with a minimum of fuss. The mention of CIA director Gordon's name gave the President the only clue as to what this might be about.
He'd been briefed in the past week on what the CIA had dubbed "the Betaville Three." Unknown persons having arrived by unknown means from somewhere unknown. The President hadn't taken that much notice. He'd been tol
d this kind of stuff — top-secret paranormal crap — usually came up about twice in a four-year term. It was something he had to deal with, but his predecessors had told him it always turned out to be just that: crap.
In other words, the President had been briefed on the Betaville Three, but that didn't mean he believed.
His plan was to bound into the Oval Office, quietly agitated, his way of showing displeasure about the ungodly hour.
But when he came through the door and caught his first look at the three visitors, now without their hoods, standing in the middle of the office, he stopped in his tracks.
Hunter was back to his full X-Forces regalia: cape, boots, helmet, the works. Zarex had recalled his star duds from the twenty-sixth; they were cleaned and pressed and, if anything, seemed even smaller on him. Tomm had also managed to scare up a new cassock. This one was jet black, with a built-in shiny white collar, smartly pleated cuffs, and slightly flared shoulders. It was a hard concept to grasp, but for once the diminutive padre actually looked, well… religious. In an interstellar kind of way.
The President just stared at them for a moment, then shut his mouth and continued on to the safety of his desk. He sat down, at the same time silently counting the number of armed Secret Service men crowded into the room. There were thirteen in all.
Not a good number, he thought.
He took his glasses out, put them on the end of his nose, and then looked up at Gordon.
"OK, Steve, this better be good."
Gordon was a man who rarely looked flustered or nervous, but he was a bit shaky at the moment.
"Mr. President, something very grave has come up," he said. "I believe you must be briefed on it immediately."
The President looked at the three visitors.
"Does the CIA want Halloween moved up a couple weeks?"
No one laughed.
Gordon started again. "In the past twenty-four hours, we have made a series of rather startling discoveries. The first one is that these three gentlemen here are not from this planet."
