Adjusting the gain on his transceiver, Erik sighed internally. These four were the only ones to brave this final leg of their perilous, historic journey. A mere four out of the trillions filling the Sol system. That didn't say much for courage and dedication of the average UP citizen. Then again, it was sweeps week on the TriD, and saving the world was hardly a match for Nude Celebrity Mud Wrestling. Art will always triumph.
Rat-a-clack, rat-a-clack, the iron wheels of the environmentally correct locomotive clattered over every rail joint of the Earth sized moon of Saturn as the convoy steadily built speed, bio-degradable black smoke pouring from the tall fluted chimney. Filling the horizon overhead was the ringed glory of their gas giant mother world. On either side of the rattling train were the ragged cliffs of a low ravine, an arroyo actually, although few folk knew the word these days. But then, the shame of modern education was next week's story. The terraforming of Titan had started 100 years ago, and today was its ultimate culmination. If only they could crash this train into a toxin polluted lake before they were all killed by accidents or terrorists.Saturn, your vacation wonderland. Whee.
"Dr. Bentley, how's it going?" Kaye asked, holding a hand before the floating HoverCam before him to signal a break in the story flow.
Her long hair an auburn Medusa's nest, Alice glanced up from her wrist work. "Statistically, the events plaguing us have almost exceeded any possibility of random causation and risen to the mathematical point of certainty," she shouted.
In the far distance, something exploded in the gray sky with violent results above the mountainous Titan garbage dump.
"Yeah, well statistics will only help you so much against anti-personnel Gotcha! missiles," Sgt. Zane remarked, flicking his gun safety off and on nervously.
A rocky smile from the inhuman pilot. "At least the protective umbrella from the Titan Defense Corp is still in operation. We're not dead yet, officer!"
"Ah, 'yet' being the operative word, citizen."
At their feet, the train engineer and chief technician of the scientific project snored peacefully on top of each other. Both of their PocketDocs had mysteriously given them a massive overdose of 'Don't Worry, Be Sleepy!' tranquilizers just as the train was going around Dead Man's Curve. They should have crashed, just another amazing coincidence in an endless stream of them. And they would have died, if not for the timely intervention of Rocky, a tourist who had inadvertently gotten on the wrong train.
Plus the assistant train engineer had never showed up. All of the doors, windows and garbage chute of his home had become bizarrely jammed this morning and after he managed to wiggle out the doggie door, his car wouldn't start from the relatively simple, but unsolvable, problem that its entire engine had been removed by thieves during the night.
Curls to the wind, Erik snorted. Thieves his butt! The reporter had no damn idea who their unseen enemy was, but they really gave a new definition to the word 'persistent'. And added a few lines to the description of ruthless. Webster and Roget would have been proud of them. Just before they shot the bastards. Whoever the nameless enemy was.
At the broom-handle throttle, cramped in the small, human-sized control booth, was their two meters of scaled alien muscle, living granite fingers nimbly operating the iron control rods and wheels with a surgeon's delicacy. Or more precise, the knowledgeable touch of a being that loved machines.
Dressed only in a bulging tool belt and pre-space aviator scarf, the Choron tourist had been pressed into service as the improvised chauffeur of the 100 ton train by Bentley and Zane when the railroad engineers had resigned from the job by hitting the floor and snoring in stereo. Although not specifically interested in this human endeavor, saving a world was a noble deed! Besides, (assorted snorts, grunts and a rude flatulent noise) was getting paid by the hour for the task.
Jammed into the back of the cabin so it would have enough room for a good picture was a flying ceramic egg; aerials, antennae and an array of telephoto lenses covering the exposed surface. A 'Menkin' class HoverCam floated effortlessly above the shoulder of Erik like the hologram parrot of a cyborg pirate. The effect was augmented by the fact that one of the three lenses of the Toshiba camcorder was broken recently by shrapnel from an inexplicably exploding film vending machine and the TBBC news reporter had temporarily covered the cracked glass with a tiny eye-patch.
Why would anybody want to stop a reclamation project?
"Gods above and below!" Rocky cursed, thumping on unbreakable gauges and thus proving the manufacturer's claim was correct. Inexorably the train began to slow.
"Oh, what now?" Dr. Bentley demanded, dropping her stylus.
The Choron turned to face the tiny human without bothering to move his shoulders. "The main drive rod appears to have disconnected itself. We're losing all motivational power!"
"What about using Scientology?" the Titan officer joked dryly.
"Ha. I laugh. You're fired," Alice snapped.
Wisely, Erik covered the built-in microphone on his camcorder as he spat twelve of the fourteen dirty words you still couldn't say on television. Even in the 24th century. Funny cops. Just what they needed.
Craning her neck out the window, Bentley could just see a dark flat mass ahead of them, and her nose hairs started to curl and burn. Without a doubt, the infamous Lake Underdunk. They were so close and yet so far.
"Ideas!" the scientist barked loudly, trying desperately not to breath. Phew, what a stink!
While the officer and the reporter scrunched their faces in thought, and then gagged as the smell of the lake hit them like a nasal injection of sewage, the alien brandished a wrench.
"I'll free the rear carriages," he said and charged off into the empty passenger compartment. "Momentum equals mass over gravity plus velocity."
True enough. "But who's going to drive this thing?" Erik demanded, gasping for air or any reasonable facsimile.
"It's a train on tracks," Sergeant Zane wheezed, arching an eyebrow. "Where's it going to go? Off for a pizza?"
Rat-a-clack. Rat-a-clack.Then from the rear of the train there came a metallic noise, half crunch, half snap and all loud. Instantly, the last two of the passenger compartments started to drag behind and the train drastically increased speed. The noise was repeated twice more and in short order there was nothing remaining of the once mighty convoy but the environmentally safe, wood burning, steam locomotive and the stainless steel tanker car holding the 55,000 gallons of the mutant brew, Y.U.M. 123. Again, Dr. Bentley fumed over why would anybody want to destroy such a benign project?
Soon Rocky returned. The alien had encountered no problems disconnecting the rear carriages, as all of them were empty. The plush seats, massive buffet and robotic bar cold and untouched. Although he bitterly hated cowards, Kaye really couldn't blame the local politicians and bigwigs from passing on this trip. Amalgamated Water had been a horror from the word launch. Computers crashed, email lost, water pipes burst in the middle of conferences, power outages, diagnostic machinery miswired, chemicals improperly labeled, vicious pencil sharpeners which worked too damn well, and sub-zero bathrooms. Nothing violent, nothing direct. No single act that would plainly state outside interference, which was why Zane was the only cop they had as protection, only endless little problems which bled the hope and drive from the people involved as efficiently as...ah, disconnecting the drive rods of a stream locomotive.
Holding onto a stanchion, Erik stuck an Irish Coffee flavorstick into his mouth and sucked a dozen millimeters of color from the confection, as the HoverCam automatically fed a prerecorded commercial into the AV loop. Faintly he could hear himself saying "If it fits in the palm of your hand, is made of plastic, costs under ten dollars and breaks in a week, its another fine product from...The Gunderson Corporation!" Personally, he was impressed. Truth in advertising, what a wild concept.
Scanning the sky and the ravine around them, Zane loosened a collar button. "What's the status?" he barked in a military manner.
"We'll make it," R
ocky said, throwing his wrench aside tiredly. "Although stopping may be an interesting procedure."
"Interesting, how?" Zane asked.
With a grating noise, an eyeridge was raised. "Don't crashes always make good TriD viewing?"
"Oh swell."
Continuing to build speed, the train crested the arroyo, and started hurtling down the tracks towards the horrible thick quagmire of Lake Underdunk. Officially the most polluted body of water in the fourteen worlds of the Human Solar system according to the Ecological Survey of 2207. And considering Boston Harbor in America, the Chernobyl Chili Factory in Russia, the Bikini Atoll nuclear test Site, lower south Marsportville near the sulfur plant, along with most of the take-out restaurants in Bombay, India, that was really saying something.
With one silicate hand on the throttle, Rocky kicked open the firedoor and reached across the cabin to grab hold of a log in the aft tinderbox. But as the tree trunk passed in front of Sergeant Zane, the man went stiff.
"Hold it!" Zane shouted, his 1mm Bedlow laser pistol out of its shoulder holster and leveled at the lumbering leviathan.
Just to be polite, everybody else also froze motionless.
"I'm a cyborg," the officer enunciated slowly, his blue eyes narrowed to dark slits. "And this log throws a radar shadow."
"Impossible," Bentley snorted, crossing her arms. "Wood couldn't do that unless," her voice started to fail. "...there's something metallic inside."
Gingerly, the alien placed the innocent appearing log on the floor and Zane went to work with a Venus Army Knife. With a click, the rough wood broke in half the two pieces separating with a hydraulic sigh and lying on the floor was a nasty looking assortment of steel tubes, fiber optic cables, digital timer and four large blocks of a grayish clay compound. Nobody had any doubt as to what the infernal device was. It was classic. Prototypical of its kind.
"That's a bomb, isn't it," Rocky asked, nudging the explosive with a toe.
Flavorstick dropping from his mouth, Kaye pushed the alien back. "And it is live!" he shouted in rising fear, as the internal indicators started winking and blinking wildly. Holy prack!
"Not anymore," Zane said calmly, ripping a red wire free from the technological spaghetti. In a sad ratcheting sound, the indicators turned off and the internal electrostatic supports of the device went limp.
While the rest sighed in relief, Rocky quickly picked the fifty-kilo charge up in a hand and heaved it over the side of the train doing his very best impersonation of Knute Rockne as the Statue of Liberty.
Arching into the distance, the log/bomb hit the middle of Lake Underdunk - with more of asplootthan a splash and disappeared instantly into the watery morass.
"Better," smiled the alien.
Alice cocked an eyebrow at the goliath technician. "Do you really think that was necessary?"
Was what she intended to ask, but before the words could leave her mouth the whole lake seemed to heave upwards, the putrid waters parting in a strident roar of hot gases and dead fish shotgunning into the air as if the world itself was vomiting. Smelled like it too. Whew!
Peeking out from behind the HoverCam, the scientist apologized for doubting the technician.
"Agreed," Zane said, his eyes glowing a faint blue as he stared real hard at everything. "Now we're safe."
"For the moment," Kaye noted, scanning the horizon with a pair of trinoculars. Ever since he had been on this damn story, somebody, or bodies, had been systematically trying to stop it. Now their efforts had escalated from slashing the tires on ground cars and stealing clothes to outright murder.
"Although we didn't include a guardian in our original contract," Rocky said facing the tiny scientist. "And I do think we should renegotiate for that."
"My station will kick in an extra thousand for the exclusive rights to the bomb story," Kaye snapped impatiently.
Rocky gave a stalactite grin. "Done."
Geez, reluctantly the reporter was starting to get the feeling that somebody, somewhere, was probably paying the Choron to use gravity. He didn't do anything for free!
With a grateful nod to Erik, Alice glanced backwards at the massive refrigerated tanker trailing behind them just to make sure it was still there, safe and secure. That precious tank was the total capital worth of her company, Enviro Inc.
For inside that container was a new form of artificial life, and one even more useful than the previously created Bacteria 1040, which specialized in eating income tax forms.
Environment Incorporated had long been bothered by the fact that when Humanity went into space, they left all of the garbage on Earth. As each colony matured, so did their pollution level. Thus, Enviro Inc. had created a sub-company, Amalgamated Water, and their brilliant staff in a sanitized space lab high above Jupiter spent the next two decades inventing Y.U.M. 123.
Y.U.M. was a genetically unstable organism with a total life span of six hours, and it ravenously ate anything suspended in the water that wasn't alive. How the technicians got the stuff to make this distinction between a sluggish fish and an oil slick was beyond even their normally lugubrious ability to explain. But she had seen the test, and the stuff worked. About all it didn't consume was concrete and steel. And thus was no danger to bridges, tunnels or floating boats. Although a scuba driver caught unawares might find himself suddenly stark naked, wearing only his air tank and a waterproof watch.
The end result was if Y.U.M. were introduced into a water system, like a polluted river, the water would be rendered clean, absolutely chemically clean, drinkable, without any damage to the fish or plants. Should any still be living in the target cesspool.
The scientists at AmWa had started experimenting upon Kool-Aid, then beef stew, working their way up to raw bathroom sewage, and finally to industrial sludge. But the fluid contents of Underdunk, this was a sublime combination of all these with the muck of a swamp, the waste of a toxic chemical dump site and the dissolved inventory of a garbage heap! Even the field-testing in New Jersey hadn't prepared them for this.
"Plane," Sgt. Zane said, pointing towards the horizon.
Kaye pivoted and his HoverCam focused on the approaching speck. He just found the correct focus when a dozen other specks rose from the ground and the aerial dot blossomed into a quite spectacular fireball.
"Whew. Nice missile work," the alien commented.
"The gang at Titan Defense are masters of destruction," Sgt. Zane boasted proudly.
Erik grumped, "Your tax dollars at work. Maybe now the cops will believe us."
"I sure do," the officer stated.
"Why?" Dr. Bentley demanded petulantly. "Why would anybody not want a lake cleaned?"
Only the rat-a-clack of the train and the sounds of the syrupy water lapping sluggishly against the mottled beach answered her question.
"It'll make the property values go up," Rocky suggested shoving logs into the furnace, but only after Sergeant Zane had given him a nod for each one. "Perhaps the source of the attacks wanted them to go down so he could purchase the land cheaply."
"The government owns the property," Zane answered. "It's going to become a park. If this works."
"Yes, if!"
Rounding a bend in the tracks, the mixed crew could now plainly see their final destination. The infamous Lake Underdunk. There were no flies in the swampy air above the murky waterway because nobody made gas masks quite that tiny.
"So what's the plan?" Kaye asked, hoping the fumes wouldn't dissolve his camera.
Rigidly at attention, Sergeant Zane turned around from his saluting a passing Titan flag. They were now officially on government property. "As we pass by the lake, we open a series of nozzles and spray the entire eastern bank of the sludge pile."
"So stopping is not necessary?" Rocky asked curiously, rubbing his hands together and making a sound like sandpaper on a brick.
"Not until we want to get off."
Surreptitiously, the granite giant hid the broken brake wheel behind his back. "Sounds good!" As long a
s they didn't charge him for breakage. Even a locomotive probably came under the universal axiom, 'Nice to look at, nice to hold...'etc., etc.
"The Y.U.M. is at operational temperature!" Alice called, minutely adjusting gauges on the tanker by tapping commands onto her wrist secretary. "In range in 35 seconds....twenty...ten... no!"
"What?" Kaye snapped, extending his mike.
Frantic tapping. "The release control is stuck!"
"Allow me," Rocky rumbled, and reaching for the emergency manual release handle set among the engine controls, the alien used fingertip pressure to shove the steel bar forward one single notch. The rod broke off completely, falling to the floor and shattering like glass. Which it was.
"Ghtqz! This is a real fifteen cent operation!" the huge alien cursed rudely. Or was the human phrase, nickel and dime? Well, whatever, it was definitely time for some change!
"Son of a prack!" Sgt. Zane cried furiously, the Titan agent drawing his Bedlow laser and pointing the weapon at the tanker.
"No!" Dr. Bentley cried out, stepping between him and the tanker. "At this range the Y.U.M. fumes would kill us before they disperse! Even with the wind factor!"
At those words, Kaye slumped. So, their unknown foe had succeeded. Amalgamated Water had spent every cent, pulled every string to get this one test into operation. Its failure meant an end to the whole operation. There was nothing more to be done. What a terrible end for the story.
"Do you mind?" Rocky asked, plucking the laser from the officer. As the startled humans watched, the alien bent ridiculously far out of the cabin and fired one long burst from the energy pistol at something far ahead of them.
"Thanks," the stone said tossing the weapon back.
"Hey, the power pack is empty!" Zane gasped in surprise.
"What did you do?" gasped Kaye, scanning with his trinoculars.
"I destroyed the Underdunk inlet bridge," Rocky replied calmly.
"What?" chorused the carbon based life-forms.
Below them the steaming mire of the horribly polluted basin flashed by like a vista from Hell.
Invasion from Uranus Page 4
