by Mack Maloney
Hunter felt his hand grip the control stick even tighter as he passed through thirty-thousand feet. He began breathing deeply from the oxygen mask. The high g-forces — never a factor in ultradrive — had him pinned against his seat. The sun was burning his face, around his eyes, along his cheekbones, on the bottom of his forehead. Not like the burn one got from flying too fast for too long in space. That was a glow, stuck under the skin. This was the burn of a star, close by, one that looked awfully big from this perspective. Still, its warmth felt good on his face.
Yes, Hunter had done this before. The way the electricity was rushing out of his body, through the steering control, through the control panel, out to each square millimeter of the aircraft's frame and back again, this was a feeling. The feeling. It was not about what was pushing him through the air but rather that he was actually doing it, seemingly against all odds. Against the law of gravity.
And that's when two words popped into his head. Just two words, but he knew right away what they meant, and suddenly he had the first real memory of what he might have been before he found himself on Fools 6 that dark night. Just two words, yet they'd managed to make an impossible leap over several thousand years from who and what he was before to now, this moment. All because this ascent into these sun-drenched, clear blue skies was something he'd done so many times before, it would have been impossible for his psyche to keep the secret down any longer.
Two words: Fighter pilot.
That's what I used to be…
The spell was broken right after his aircraft passed through seventy thousand feet.
He twisted the plane on its tail and looked over his shoulder. The funny little world was quickly dropping away from him.
Very soon now, his flying machine would have to become a spacecraft again. This was where it might get hairy. He removed the strip of electrical tape and eased the throttle up a notch. Again, he was slammed back against his seat. Just a touch, and he was suddenly going seventy-five hundred miles per hour.
Another touch, he was at nine thousand miles per hour.
Another, eleven thousand, then thirteen.
Hunter suddenly crossed his fingers. Another kiss of the throttle. Another deep breath. He was now going fifteen thousand miles per hour… straight up.
His machine was shaking violently now. Yes, he knew every bolt and seam in the aircraft, and at the moment, he imagined each and every one of them was coming undone. He'd come a long way just to break apart trying to get off this tiny little world. Is that the way it would be?
He held on, fingers still crossed, aircraft still shaking. Speed at seventeen thousand five hundred.
Then came a bright flash, and everything… just… slowed… down.
He was in orbit.
So far, so good.
He quickly killed the throttle and drifted up to an altitude of 110 miles. Then he turned his craft over.
The flying machine had been knocked around a lot lately. Bouncing back and forth between dimensions wasn't the best of situations for a complex piece of machinery. Sometimes what blinked into the twenty-sixth dimension wasn't always exactly what blinked back out. But plainly, his craft had survived the ordeal of his unconventional ascent. All the nuts and bolts were still together, and everything was still reading green.
Even better, puncturing the time bubble had apparently been effortless as well. Hunter had seen no indications that he'd physically broken through anything once he'd left the atmosphere. This seemed like a big relief, like one less thing to worry about.
He went completely upside down now, feet pointing toward all those stars. Below him, the little planet was turning very peacefully. This was Hunter's first glimpse of it from any great height. It surprised him how small it really was. Just one large landmass, the one he'd driven across not so long ago, surrounded by all that blue, sparkling water. He felt his heart thump twice. There hadn't been a dull moment since coming to this place, yet he'd enjoyed his time on the surface so far. Pretty girls. Cool cars. The open road. The Seagram's. From here, the planet didn't look like a place harboring so many dark secrets.
From here, it looked like an oasis in this vast, empty piece of space. Something warm in the endless, cold blackness. Despite all the drama, he liked it down there.
Planet America…
It was the next best thing to home.
But now it was on to the mission.
He turned the flying machine around and put the nose pointing up. Hanging at about the two o'clock position was this desolate system's rather wacky moon.
It was about one-fifth the size of the planet below, and Hunter guessed it was about sixty thousand miles out. He flicked his throttle, and an instant later was a thousand feet above the satellite's north pole. The glare from its white, powdery surface was so bright, Hunter had to lower his helmet visor again. The moon had a heavily cratered face and bore a striking resemblance to the Moon, Earth's sacred luna. But Hunter knew right away this satellite was a fake. It wasn't a natural body; it was manufactured. How could he be so sure? Because there was a visible wobble to its motion as it roared through space; it was also traveling at an unnaturally high speed. Both were clear indications of space engineering.
But strangest of all, the moon was not exactly orbiting the tiny planet of America. It just appeared that way.
Hunter steered around to the dark side of the moon, astonished at how fast the satellite was moving. Once in the moon's shadow, less the satellite's intense glare, he had a clearer view of the local solar neighborhood, and it turned out to be a very crowded place. This system did have more planets, just as the holo-spy had claimed. There were at least two dozen of them, and those were just the ones he could see. They were all different colors and sporting different types of terrain. But strangest of all, they were all floating in the same orbital plane.
Hunter began chasing the swiftly moving moon now, his sensors telling him that the satellite was actually locked into a preprogrammed path that brought it into orbit not just around Planet America, but around the other planets in the system as well. It would rise and fall on one planet, then dash along to the next planet in line, go into orbit, provide a moonrise and set for it, then move off again to the next planet and the next. His scanners confirmed the moon would complete this circuit of planets once every twenty-four hours. This meant it could be observed by every planet in the same way, just at different but predictable times, similar to the way that the Moon was observed from Earth. Again, an amazing if puzzling example of celestial manipulation.
Though Hunter knew time was of the essence, he couldn't resist doing a very quick recon of the system's other nearby planets. The next one over from America was snow-covered, not unlike Tonk. The next appeared to be half jungle, half desert. Next came a temperate, mountainous world. Then one that was green and blue like America, but instead of having a sea, it had one huge river running right through it. Conversely, the next planet in line was nearly all water, with a huge island stuck in the middle of its southern hemisphere.
The sixth planet over was the one that most resembled America. It, too, had an irregular landmass that stretched around its circumference, though north to south. It had lots of mountains, lots of rivers, and two smaller islands hanging off the northwestern portion of the mainland.
Hunter was able to fly close enough to these planets to con-firm that they, too, held life. There were cities and roadways and small towns and villages scattered all over the half-dozen worlds, even the polar one.
And the line of planets did not stop there. Based on the distances between these immediate bodies, quick calculations told him there might be as many as thirty-six planets revolving around the tiny star. All of them appeared to be orbiting just far enough away from the next so as not to be seen, big and bright, in the night sky, another startling feat of space engineering.
Hunter suppressed the urge to zigzag his way right around the inner system. Time was too important now. But he was able to look over the fantas
tic celestial display with a small measure of satisfaction.
Undoubtedly, these were the Home Planets.
I finally found them, he thought.
Another nudge of the throttle, and he was streaking toward the outer edge of the solar system, to where the so-called heavenly bodies lay.
Located about 700,000 miles out from the Home Planets, Hunter discovered on approach that these bodies were huge, at least five times larger than the planets orbiting closer in to the tiny yellow sun. Like the Home Planets, they all traveled along the same orbital plane, just farther out from the sun. This configuration made a ring that surrounded the inner ring of planets, not unlike a fence around a prison. Once again, the whole thing just screamed of massive space engineering, a gigantic project even by present day's standards. In fact, Hunter wondered if even the Fourth Empire would have the tools to take on such an endeavor today. Yet the Home Planets' system was at least three thousand five hundred years old.
He pulled back on the throttle and was quickly orbiting one of the heavenly bodies. The first thing he noticed was that body didn't look heavenly at all.
It was essentially just another fake moon. It had no topography to speak of, no terrain, mountains, or water. It was a big white globe wrapped in with what Hunter assumed was the ancient version of terranium, the artificial-yet-living fauna which covered many engineered planets, including Earth itself. Nothing was growing down on this surface, though. It was covered with craters. Hundreds of them pockmarked the powdery, lifeless surface.
What had happened here? This moon was built, no doubt, with grand ideas in mind. But it was dead.
No puff. No life.
Interesting…
Hunter decided to call this Moon 01.
His intention was to go right around the ring of sentinels. If everything went right, Moon 01 was where he would wind up at the end of the journey.
He kicked into ultradrive again and was soon passing close to the next moon in line, several million miles away. What he found here was more of the same. Both his eyes and his scanners told him that this was another huge, artificial world, built for some reason but apparently never occupied. Like the first one, it was hanging lifeless in space. And it was the same for the next eleven moons. There were mirror images of themselves, every one. Lifeless, deserted.
Then he came to Moon 13, and here he found another surprise. This satellite hadn't even been completed. The upper half of its northern hemisphere was missing. The massive networks of girders and floating pilings could clearly be seen beneath the thick fake crust. Hunter went down low and hovered above its surface for a moment, just long enough to see the great jagged edge and look down into the maw of gigantic support beams. Hundreds of ancient tools were lying about the powdery surface. A trail of them led up to the precipice itself.
They appeared as if they'd been dropped there suddenly and never touched again.
Hunter continued the ultraquick tour, coming upon more than two dozen sentinel moons that were less than complete. Indeed, some barely had their superstructures built.
As he passed by the empty moons with routine quickness now, the idea that these sentinels were manned by monsters, somehow gazing down on the Home Planets, ready to rain down all sorts of destruction, had proved to be a false one so far. The heavenly bodies seemed to be little more than a massive facade. Was that what the original builders had intended all along? To fabricate a bunch of empty moons and a bluff? Or had something happened in the distant past that had forced the abandon-ment of the sentinels? Or had they ever been occupied in the first place?
Then he came to Moon 39.
The first clue that something was different about this satellite appeared when his very-long-range environmental scans bounced back saying the place had a 99.99 percent puff. None of the previous sentinels had boasted any atmospheres at all. Yet his gear was telling him Moon 39 had breathable air, clouds, weather — and possibly, a whole lot more.
Hunter slipped into a very high orbit around the artificial satellite, jigging his throttle so he didn't stay in the same place too long. He didn't need his long-range scanners to see what was happening below him. The moon was definitely occupied. It had a gigantic military base located on its equator on the side facing the sun. This installation appeared large enough to house hundreds of thousands of personnel. The barracks alone stretched for miles in every direction. The base also had many spaceport facilities, at least a hundred launch platforms, with what appeared to be working spaceships in their bays. Two gigantic control towers provided the center of this enormous installation. Its airspace was thick with sky cars, combat patrol craft, even a few battle cruiser-class vessels lumbering about.
Hunter felt his heart drop to his boots. Any dreams that maybe the sentinels were just a hoax had now gone up in smoke. Just as the holo-spy had claimed, there was someone out here. A lot of someones. This base went on forever; some offshoots nearly wrapped themselves right around the artificial moon. Hunter asked his scanner to estimate how many soldiers the planet was holding. The answer came back: "one million, probably more." And just from what Hunter had seen, they had enough spacelift to pick them up and deliver them somewhere, if the need for that ever arose.
"Damn," Hunter whispered to himself. Home Planets was a solar prison.
And these were its prison guards.
So now what?
Hunter had the fleeting notion to attack the place. Lay waste to it just as he'd done back on Tonk. But right away, his instincts told him this was a very bad idea. First of all, it was biting off more than he could chew. This base was thousands of times larger than the enemy installations on Tonk. It would take him days of endless strafing just to try to get it all, something that whoever was below probably wouldn't sit still for. Plus he didn't know if any other moons down the line were occupied, or if these guys had any backup forces somewhere close by.
Besides, torching this place, even if he could do it, would not answer two really important questions: Who were these guys, and what did they really have to do with the imprisonment of Planet America?
No, this flight had not been intended as a combat mission; its aim was to recon and gather intelligence, and Hunter knew it was wise to just stick to the plan.
His job now was to get a closer look.
He'd put his time-advancing spy technique to the ultimate test only once before.
Back on Zazu-Zazu, while the final battle was taking place on the walls of the city of Qez, Hunter had flown superquick out to the enemy's huge battle tank, a monstrosity known as a xarcus. He'd traveled so fast between two points, he literally got ahead of himself in regular time. Operating within this twilight zone, he'd been able to land on the xarcus, penetrate its hull, and move around inside, seeing all, while not being seen.
It sounded fantastic and cool, but actually it wasn't. Walking around invisible in any enemy's camp was not a pleasant experience. The seeming impossibility of it all created a strong measure of doubt that it was even happening. This gave everything a sort of distorted, dreamlike quality, not a plus, considering the situation. There was further stomach tightening because of the feeling that at any moment, the natural law he was breaking would somehow whip itself back to shape and make him pay. By making him visible.
So the time-busting vanishing act was not something to be taken lightly. But Hunter knew it had to be done.
All he needed was a running start.
He whipped around the moon exactly one hundred times, throttle opened up to full ultraspeed overdrive, building up the momentum needed to get ahead of himself.
Once he'd become advanced in time, he floated in for a soft landing next to a small power station. The site was about a quarter mile from the hub of the vast military base and not far from the soaring twin towers that looked down upon it all.
Now he just waited. The inner base was mobbed with space soldiers and officers, some walking, some marching, some streaking by overhead in sky cars. Hunter sat perfectly still for wh
at seemed to him to be more than a minute, watching as these troops passed by on all sides of him. From all indications, they could not see him. He finally popped the canopy, collected his blaster rifle and his ray gun, men jumped to the ground. Two soldiers passed right through his body, the final proof that he was invisible. His time-cheating technique had worked again.
The soldiers around him were wearing basic black combat uniforms, not unlike Hunter's own, but with tiny ornamental fins sprouting from each shoulder and a set of winglike projections on the back. The uniforms looked oddly out of date.
The personal weapons these troops were carrying with them seemed elderly, too. They looked like ray guns issued to the Fourth Empire's units several hundred years before. This did not mean they were any less deadly, though. Same for the literally thousands of battlefield weapons in evidence around the sprawling base. These included an incredible number of Master Blasters, smaller death-tube arrays, and even some antique sonic guns. All this made the pop guns employed by the bad guys back on Tonk look puny by comparison. And it was a lot of stuff for such an isolated place far beyond the edge of the Galaxy.
Hunter folded his flying machine into a Twenty 'n Six and began walking. His ray gun was up and ready, only because it made him feel better. Could he actually fire his weapon effectively while operating inside the one-step-ahead situation? He didn't know. Though he'd exchanged gunfire inside the xarcus with some mysterious enemy troops, looking back on it, he believed that gun battle might have been fought in a different time or dimension entirely. His theory now was that yes, he could probably fire the handgun, but the deadly ray it emitted would most likely show up an hour or two later. He kept the gun up in front of him anyway.
He passed through the crowded administrative and control areas of the base, seeing lots but learning little about this powerful garrison army. Their uniforms bore no markings, and there were no flags or banners about. Obviously, the huge army was, in a sense, working undercover. He wandered through its transport yards, taking note of the hundreds of troop shuttles, gleaming under the weak yellow sun. These were not the Bugs he'd traveled in during his first trip on an Empire ship. Those little scooters could barely carry a hundred soldiers for a distance never exceeding the trip down from orbit. Though they looked dated as well, these shuttles could accommodate at least a thousand men each and were big enough to take them clear across a good-sized solar system. There was no doubt that these vessels could reach any of the Home Planets quickly and deliver an enormous space army to their surface, ready for battle.
