by Marc Everitt
“No, I want you to stay hidden.” Maystone looked none the wiser. “Look, Have we got times for games of hide and seek. Why don’t you tell me what you want me to do when I get to Graves’ World?”
“Give me strength, look I’ll try to make this easy for you. When you get to Graves’ World.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to stay hidden so you won’t be seen.”
“Well, of course, I’m going to hide. What do you think I am, some sort of moron!?” shouted Maystone much to the consternation of an elderly lady who was waiting to use the vid-unit. Back on Earth, Arlen shifted in his seat and rolled his eyes to heaven, or at least to the ceiling of his office.
“Do you anticipate any…. ah…. problems with that?” he persisted gainfully.
“Any native life forms to worry about?” asked the security officer as he tried to get his little used brain to operate. Arlen replied that there were none and the burly man laughed.
“Well, then…. I’ll land a few miles out and walk in, then set up a shelter and keep an eye on things from there. Nope, can’t see there being a problem,” and with that he cut the vid-link and left the cubicle, pausing only to intimidate the elderly lady who waited for him to walk by and then muttered, “Arsehole.”
Arlen sat back in his chair comforted by the outcome of the conversation. Maystone was his best security operative, which he knew was no great claim, but there it was all the same. If anyone could keep an eye on West it was he. Sometimes, Arlen thought that it would be so much easier to have West removed from the company but West made powerful friends during the ‘Wisconsin’ incident and their voices held sway with high executives in the company. So, for the moment, West would have to stay as Arlen’s particular cross to bear. Still, he thought, if things went well on Graves’ World then West could never return at all. Maystone had his orders for what to do should certain ‘contingencies’ arise.
The ever-present on Arlen’s brow began to ease ever so slightly as this crossed his mind, and he turned his attention to other matters.
***
“What’s that, man? A cat? You’re shittin’ me, man. No, that’s a crazy tale, my brother.” The small, feral looking criminal roared with laughter as he sat back in the alcove of ‘Dodgy Joe’s bar’. Carlos Rodriguez did not see what was so funny.
“Look, I did not come here to cheer you up, Wang.”
“Well, it’ll be the first time you did cheer me up if it was, my man,” replied Wang. He was an associate of Rodriguez, only far more cheerful. He was a short man, with faint traces of oriental blood in him, which was reflected in his name. He made a stark contrast to the taller, Latin looks of Rodriguez. They boasted to all they could, that they had done several jobs together, but unfortunately these were part time jobs in fast food restaurants.
Still, Wang was the nearest thing that Carlos Rodriguez had to a friend. Wang tried to stop laughing, “What did you come here for, man? Want to borrow my dog, or something. Is that what you want?” With that, Wang started to laugh again. He turned to some of the other nefarious characters who frequented ‘Dodgy Joe’s bar’.
“Hey, listen to what happened to Carlos,” he got no further as Rodriguez grabbed his cheap nylon shirt, pulling him forward. “That’s it, Wang. Do you want in on this job or not?”
“Depends, man. What’s the profit?” the Oriental’s eyes were now deadly serious and focused on Rodriguez.
“Look, you bring your van and we’ll clean the place out, it’s a goldmine.”
“What about the cat?” sniggered Wang.
“The cat? I’ll deal with that don’t you worry.”
“Oh, man. Count me in. You get my van for the evening and I get 60%.”
Rodriguez was shocked but not surprised. “Wang, you inherited your father’s head for fractions. Right, let’s go shopping.” That cat was in for a lot of trouble, thought Rodriguez.
***
“Ah, you must be Mr West,” snorted Major Hastings as Lana showed Eli into the control room. Will Shanks was sat as a console on the far side of the room eating a sandwich (much to Hastings’ consternation) and Sara Crick was looking up from her results. Eli was still uneasy because of the behaviour of Mrs Maxwell and so took a few seconds to register the mistake.
“Er, no. I’m Mr Jackson. Mr West is…. er…. on his way,” replied Eli as the Major eyed him up and down approvingly. As he did so the two remaining members of the Graves’ World research team entered the control room.
Alan Johnson pumped Eli’s hand with genuine pleasure. “Good to meet you,” he beamed as the Major did the introductions. Shanks waved a hand in Eli’s direction from over his sandwich. Sara looked up, smiled politely and returned to her work. Chris Maxwell eyed Eli with obvious distaste and refused the handshake offered with a muttered comment Eli was glad he could not work out. Lana Maxwell merely smiled to herself and anticipated what she hoped was to come.
“Where is this West fellow, then?” barked the Major. Eli was forced to admit that he wasn’t exactly sure but that he was certain that he would be along soon.
***
Taylor West ducked down and to his left, as he saw a blow approaching his head. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen claws and fangs as he ducked, and he rolled to the side in an attempt to gain a second’s breathing space. ‘What the hell was it?’ he thought. Rising from the ground he saw the creature turn and charge again, all teeth and claws. He knew that one good contact from those claws would mean he wouldn’t be around to solve the mystery of Graves’ World. Leaping to the right as the animal swung at him, he felt the talons whistle past his ear and could hear the creature’s shallow, jagged breathing. Launching a counter blow to the creature’s mid-riff he was successful in buying himself a few seconds, but he knew that would be all. Unarmed, he couldn’t hope to dodge those claws for much longer.
***
“Anything I can help with?” asked Eli as he walked over to where Sara was working on a sheet of computations.
Annoyed by the distraction, she softened at the jovial features Eli possessed and said, “Not unless you can work out impossibilities, and don’t mind irrational data.”
“Why, what have you got,” inquired the engineer. Lana began to curse the other woman under her breath as she saw Eli beginning to talk to her. Chris Maxwell was keeping a close eye on his wife. Great, he thought, that’s just what I need, another black.
“These are readings about the stability of the planet. See, here and here we have what appears to be a tectonic shift or earthquake,” continued Sara as Eli looked over the sheet. “So, what’s so impossible of irrational about that?” reasoned Eli.
Alan Johnson looked over at them as Sara stood up and ran her fingers through her closely tied hair, “Graves’ World has no tectonic plates to shift.”
***
At that moment, as if to prove Sara to be a liar the entire control room began to shake; faintly at first, but growing in intensity and the research team looked to their consoles. Major Hastings started ordering the team to their stations but they were already at them and he had to be content with simply making a lot of noise. A coffee mug fell from the table, but no one except Eli seemed to notice. This was the third tremor in as many days and they were used to them, even though they were a mystery. On this occasion, this particular mystery would save Taylor West’s life.
***
Outside, the station the ground had been shaking violently for several seconds and Taylor had been glad of the distraction. The creature had just managed to force Taylor to the ground when the tremor had begun. As the ground had begun to shake, the creature had seemed to lose interest in him and had, instead, started to become very frightened. With astonishing speed the animal fled the compound, leaving Taylor West in the sand, Bruised and winded; but very much alive. After recovering his breath, Taylor picked himself up and dusted himself down, keeping an eye on the direction the creature had fled, just in case.
***
“OK, let’s try and get some accurate readings from this one,” shouted Major Hastings to little effect. The team already knew exactly what it had to do, readings were not the problem, and this was something that the Major was well aware of. However, his neuroses made it necessary for him to state the obvious and give orders beyond the call of duty. The usual pandemonium that the tremors caused in the control room was very much in evidence. Shanks strolled from one wall of electronic relays to another, gauging the effects of the seismic vibrations on the station’s infrastructure.
Although Shanks seemed to be moving fairly casually, Eli was later to learn that this was as fast as he ever moved. Sara Crick stood motionless amid the chaos, but her keen mind was working overtime to identify any pattern in the displacement occurring beneath her feet. A few metres to her left Chris Maxwell was cursing the paradox he saw before him; the monitors showed the ground rippling yet his subterranean probe, buried 100 metres beneath the surface, showed no movement at all. That cannot be, he thought, the epicentre of such a disturbance must lie under the surface.
Lana Maxwell was working at computations on a nearby computer terminal, attempting to sort through the seemingly endless statistics of it all. Alan Johnson was escorting Eli to the engineering room, in which was housed the miniature fusion reactor which provided and the station’s heat, light and power. Eli was finding out that Johnson was a very amiable fellow, but was worried about where Taylor had got to.
“So, what’s it like here? When there’s no earthquakes, of course,” joked Eli just as the tremors began to subside.
Johnson merely smiled and replied, “Well, it’s never dull. There’s not many outer colonies you could say that about.”
“Yeah, as Hanley found out,” countered Eli. The two men reached the engineering room and Eli thanked Alan for his trouble but declined the man’s offer to show him around the room. Eli knew enough about reactors, indeed they were the only aspect about engineering that he could say he excelled in.
Johnson turned away from Eli and started to return to the control room, but stopped to impart a warning to him, “Elijah? A word of advice.”
“‘Eli’ to my friends.”
“Eli, keep your head down and your eyes open.”
“I always do,” smiled Eli. As the other man paced his way back to the control room Eli found himself wishing that were true.
***
The hatchway slid open and into the station stepped Taylor West, ruffled and shaken by his encounter but unbowed and still as curious as ever. As the hatchway closed behind him Taylor made sure that he activated the hatch’s locking system. While doing so, a thought occurred to him; if the creature that had attacked him had got through the fence, which it obviously had, then the fence must have been down. But when he had inspected the lock which had so obviously been replaced recently it had most definitely been activated.
Therefore, pondered Taylor as he walked further into the station, the fence must either have malfunctioned or have been temporarily disabled by some sort of remote control. He did not believe in accidents so favoured the latter scenario, but who could have done it and why? He knew he would have to be careful on the station and made a mental note to warn Eli to do the same. The thought of his friend prompted him to pick up his pace. He felt he needed to get to Eli as soon as possible; felt that very strongly. Following signs and colour coded passageways he made his way to the control room.
As usual, the uniform which Taylor wore bore little resemblance to the overalls other engineers wore, and yet it was not customised in any way. All his life, Taylor had had problems getting clothes to suit him; they just did not seem to sit right on him. This was curious, as he was not a disproportionately built man by any stretch of the imagination.
Still, the fact remained that the overalls which company employees wore did not seem the same when worn by Taylor. It was one of the multitude of small easily missed details about him which careful observers picked up on but could not explain. The keen nature of his eyes, always moving and an indeterminate colour; these were other facts which people occasionally noted, and at that moment these very eyes were getting their first glimpse of the people he considered to be his suspects. Taylor had reached the control room, hoping to remain unseen for a few moments so as to study the people therein. However, this was not to be as the eager eyes of Lana Maxwell spotted him almost immediately.
“Hello, you must be Taylor West,” she smiled. The tremor had long since dissipated, as quickly as it had started, and life in the control room was returning to a semblance of normality. At Lana’s greeting Taylor waved in her direction and was met with the stares of six pairs of eyes. Only the whirring machinery and chattering printers disturbed the silence which threatened to drag on uncomfortably, second after second, until Lana spoke again, “Excuse our manners, we are not really used to having guests.”
“You are,” mumbled Sara in a voice only heard by Johnson who smiled to himself at the remark.
The initial sense of disquiet which most people felt on first seeing Taylor West drained away and the station’s team bean to make their introductions. Major Hastings pushed Will Shanks away to be the first to approach Taylor and he took it upon himself to introduce them formally. Taylor smiled and shook hands with each, noting particular personality traits as he did so. The overly firm grip of Chris, the lascivious pouting of the woman Taylor assumed was Mrs Maxwell by the rings on both their hands and the look of jealousy on Chris’s face, the shy smile of Sara, the unabashed friendliness of Alan, the unconcerned wave of Will or the starched formality of the Major; none of these passed Taylor by, and all were stored in his peculiarly sharp mind for future reference in terms of character analysis.
In turn, the few members of the Graves’ World colony were sizing up their newest colleague with various, differing conclusions. Taylor could not have known but one of his new acquaintances was cursing the timing of the recent tremor as, were it not to have occurred at that time, they would have been rid of a man who they had known for some time by reputation and did not want on the planet.
***
Several hours had passed and Taylor had been looking over the reactor with Eli and was keen to get his friend’s first impressions of the research team.
“Well, the Major’s an obvious bureaucrat. The Crick woman, Sara, interrupted Taylor from over the control panel circuit relays. Eli continued, but not before noting the fact that his friend had remembered a woman’s first name and had bothered to use it.
“OK. Sara is a professional, there’s no doubt about that.” Taylor nodded at this and prompted Eli to carry on, which he did. “Shanks seems very slack, but harmless. Alan is a nice guy. But the Maxwells….”
“Ah yes, the Maxwells,” agreed Taylor with a knowing look. He had heard from Eli all about the behaviour of Lana and had seen a small sample of it himself. Both engineers had commented on the unpleasantness of Mr Maxwell and Eli was about to bring it up again when the on-wall communicator buzzed into life.
Taylor pressed the switch and activated it, then spoke into it. “West,” he paused, as the message was relayed then spoke again, “on our way.” Taylor turned to his friend. “Major wants us in his office.”
Eli followed Taylor out of the door after checking the reactor’s fail-safe system was active. “What do you think of them?” he asked, curious to know what impression his colleague had picked up on which he had failed to.
However, he wasn’t prepared for the answer he received. “One of them is a killer,” said West simply.
***
The dusk of afternoon on Graves’ World began, slowly at first, to give way to the darkness of night. An almost physical battle between bright daylight and the dead light of the single, cold moon eventually handed victory to the incandescence of the nightfall. With the departure of the sun, Graves’ World becomes unfathomably cold. In actual fact, the temperature remained reasonably constant, curiously so, yet every soul who had ever set foot on Graves’ World felt
a chill when night came. It was as if the life of the planet seeped away when it twisted its face away from the sun.
As the sun sank down behind the horizon, dyeing the yellow sands a deep scarlet, the winding down of the day’s activities inside the research station began in earnest. Had a visitor to the station chosen that time to enter he would have walked into a silent entry bay from a silent courtyard. Then he would have walked along a silent corridor that stretched some twenty metres along, a length that would seem to the hypothetical visitor, both unnecessary and unpractical. That is to say, unless the visitor knew anything of the complex defensive mechanisms built along the corridor.
All colonial outposts were designed in exactly the same way, and built accordingly. The only point of entry was the hatch; all the walls around the other parts of the station were made from reinforced titanium. Any intruder would have to run the gauntlet of a twenty metre dash through defensive mechanisms which would cut through the thickest armour in seconds, The Company had long since realised that keeping it’s scientists alive on alien worlds was worth the cost.
On reaching the end of the corridor, the visitor would have been faced with a choice of directions which could be taken. For the rest of the station was arranged in a circular fashion, with four sleeping quarters to the left, two sleeping quarters, a storeroom, a medi-lab and the kitchens to the right. Straight ahead at this junction would lead the visitor to the first of two rooms that were inside the circle rather than around its periphery, this being the control room. A large oval room, with several workstations, many varied computers and a lot of assorted junk. The second of these rooms was located around the other side of the circle, if a circle can have sides, and was even bigger. Shaped like a crescent moon, the engineering room constantly throbbed to the sound of the huge reactor it contained. Our visitor would, if they had entered the station at that moment, have noted that it was very quiet. That is, unless he was in the control room, in which case he would have heard the Major’s first team talk to Taylor and Eli.
