“Good,” she said in return. I could almost picture her sitting in her hut in the village, eager to take notes on my findings.
I waited while the computer processed the scan, which happily took much less time than the first time.
“It just says ship,” I informed Samantha. “Nothing else. The computer isn’t picking up anything else.”
“Perhaps you should scan it again. Just to be sure. There has to be something else—why would they just have a single word?”
“There are other runes on other sides.”
“We scanned those. They don’t say anything about ships. It’s got to be on that side! Some clue, something!”
“There’s nothing else, I promise! Ship! That is the only word!” My frustration mounting, I reached up towards the rune. Maybe the obelisk was dirty and there were more words there, obscured by dirt?
Ferociously, I rubbed at the surface of the obelisk around the ship rune. It was useless, of course. The obelisk was clean. There simply were no other runes there. It was a dead end.
Annoyance mounting, I pounded the surface of the obelisk with the end of my fist—and felt something. The rune for ship was loose somehow.
Looking closer, I felt the rune with my fingertips. There was no doubt—the rune was a separate piece that had been placed ingeniously into the obelisk. I could wiggle it back and forth and even press it in.
What was the point of that?
I heard Maura gasp behind me. “Alan! Look!” she exclaimed.
Turning around, I saw what I had thought had been a natural rock face splitting cleanly down the middle—as if there had been an unseen seam there—and the two halves drawing apart, revealing a huge, dark opening.
“What is that?” she wondered.
“I don’t know!”
“What did you do?”
“I… I pressed the ‘ship’ rune in,” I said slowly. Had I just opened a secret door?
The halves of the rock had stopped sliding apart, leaving an opening wide enough to fly the Dragontooth into.
I reached into my pack and pulled out a flashlight. “I’m going in there to investigate,” I said, hoisting the pack again.
“Then I’ll go with you,” said Maura.
She followed as I strode towards the dark opening.
Though I set my jaw and my steps were solid, I was more than a little daunted at the prospect of marching into a dark cave that, for all I knew, hadn’t been opened for hundreds of years. Thousands, maybe.
Pressing the ship rune had opened it. Did that mean there was a ship hidden in here? I had to find out, no matter how much my better judgment was screaming against my heading into an unfamiliar cave.
To her credit, Maura didn’t seem perturbed in the least. She walked alongside me, not behind me. I shone the flashlight ahead, where I could see a wide path had been smoothed down in the rock. Leo sniffed it with suspicion.
I headed down the path, Maura at my side.
The cave was dark, and the flashlight seemed pathetic.
“It feels big in here,” commented Maura.
I shone the flashlight up above us—she was right. The ceiling was far overhead.
Maura had located something attached to a wall and was fingering it. Just as I was about to warn her against touching anything unfamiliar, the cave was flooded with light.
“Oh,” said Maura. “So that was a light switch I just touched.”
I looked around at the chamber, now lit fully by the overhead light Maura had just found. I was amazed it still functioned after all of these years.
As I stared at what lay around us, my heart sank a little. There were no ships. Just what looked like computer terminals and other hardware. Had this been some kind of lab?
Maura walked over to one of the screens and touched its smooth surface. It blinked to life.
“This computer still works!” she exclaimed. “Alan, look at this!”
Approaching, I could see that the screen was covered with runes. Lifting Samantha’s computer, I allowed it to translate the runes for us.
While the computer translated, Maura wandered around, exploring the lab.
“Alan, look at this!” She had walked over to a table. Suspended above the table was a sphere. “This looks like the planet.” She leaned closer. “Yes, it’s some kind of model of the planet. Look at these!” She pointed to a row of black markings spanning the planet’s equator all the way around the planet. “If this is the planet, what are these?”
Leaving my post in front of the alien computer screen, I walked over to the table.
The sphere was definitely a model of the planet. The black markings, upon closer inspection, looked very familiar.
“Could these be the obelisks?” I wondered aloud. “Did they really have this many of them, all around the planet like that?”
Samantha’s computer beeped, signaling the completion of the translation from the alien computer terminal. I read the translation aloud to Maura.
Project Log, Entry 598478.
The Project has failed. This planet is starting to break down the paradise we have built. The terraforming is collapsing. Soon, this place and its decades of work will be nothing but a bare rock again, the same as when we found it. There is nothing we can do—we have tried everything. As of now, our terraforming technology is no match for this planet. The change we tried to make was too drastic: a bare rock into a lush paradise, dripping with fruit.
I and the other researchers on the Project are considering abandoning these facilities and returning everyone to Homeworld. The idea of a planet for recovering trauma victims was a good one, but ultimately was a failure. We have had several cases of patients refusing to leave when their treatments were over, forcing us to return them to their families by force. Also, a few dozen of the underground support staff have reported problems with memory, which has led us to believe the memory-suppressors being used on the surface are stronger than we anticipated.
Lastly, the space anomaly in the atmosphere is getting worse. Ships coming here are reporting issues with landing and losing control. We fear these issues will escalate until it is impossible to land safely here.
We have had success with some of our trauma patients, but the risks are too great to continue. We are making plans to relocate the Project onto another world, a smaller one with a natural climate more similar to the one we are trying to achieve. We are also making changes to our terraforming formulae to make the results more permanent.
“They had problems with terraforming, too,” I murmured, remembering my own home planet. A year ago, my home planet, a colony which had been terraformed to support life, had been lost to an environmental storm. The storm had killed everyone on the colony, including my parents. Even now, thinking about it made a lump form in my throat.
“Is that the last entry?” Maura asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “There’s nothing else.”
“So that was it?” she wondered. “They just left, just like that? They didn’t even pack this place up and take it with them?”
I stared at the sphere hanging above the table. In addition to the black markings, there were several color-coded areas around the planet, the most intense colors being directly around the black markings. “They must have been tracking how well the terraforming was holding up. Look at all of this. I think all the colored areas were where the terraforming held on the strongest. They were watching it slip away, little by little.”
Maura had gone back over by the computer terminals and was busying herself trying to turn rest of the ancient alien computers on.
“Alan, most of these are dead,” she said in dismay upon finding screen after screen remaining stubbornly blank.
“They can’t all be dead,” I said. “The first one still works.”
“That appears to be the only one.”
Pocketing Samantha’s computer, I joined her in trying to coax the alien computers back to life. There were twenty computers in all. The first one w
e had encountered, the one with the Project Log on it, was the only one that still worked, despite our best efforts. We eventually gave up on the remaining computers. However, Maura discovered something else.
“Look at this. It’s an alien tablet computer, and it still works! I found it on a table over there, by a bunch of maps of the planet.” She handed it to me.
The tablet computer contained at least a paragraph of alien text, which I lost no time in feeding into Samantha’s computer for translation.
Mere moments later, the translation was complete. Samantha’s computer was getting faster and faster at learning the alien language.
I read the translation to Maura.
Project Log, Entry 598479.
Something terrible has happened. Somehow, the word got out to the patients here that we are closing down this place. We never realized until now how many of them are addicted to its effects—our news has caused a violent uprising. We are leaving. We have to. This place is too strong. Maybe with time, the addicting effects will die away, but for now, this place is dangerous.
I hear screaming outside. One of the Researchers has already been killed in the uprising. It won’t be long until the patients find out how to get inside this place.
This will be the last Project Log entry. I have sent word to the other Control Centers around the planet. The other Researchers are already aboard the ships. We are fleeing for our lives, returning home in shame. I never expected it to end like this. Never.
I finished reading and looked up at Maura. Her eyes were wide.
“That’s why everything is still here,” she said softly. “They had to flee.”
“Ships. The Researcher who wrote this mentioned ships.” Despite the grim Project Log entry I had just read, I felt hope rising in my chest. “They could have left some behind. All we have to do is find them. And pray they still work.”
Maura nodded.
We explored the rest of the lab—the Control Center. That was what the Researcher had called it. It was a big place. The alien Researchers had monitored every facet of the planet from here, even the atmosphere. They had a whole support staff down here, making sure everything was perfect for the patients living above.
I was glad I had taken Maura and Leo with me, even though Leo had done little but remain at my side the whole time. There was no doubt this place would have sent chills up my spine if I had been alone.
We found more computer consoles in adjoining rooms. Hundreds of them, even. I was going to suggest to Maura that we check if any of these were still in working order, but she spoke first.
“Look!” she announced, pointing.
Looking, I saw that the rune for ship, one that I could now recognize on sight, was emblazoned across one of the doorways. We headed for it in unison.
Through the doorway was yet another room. Maura entered it first and gasped.
We had found spaceships.
Chapter 24
I stood for a few moments, not wanting to believe it, my body trembling. I had just barely allowed myself to hope for this, and there had always been more than a shred of doubt that we would find anything…
But here it was. An underground hangar filled with genuine alien spaceships.
I approached the nearest one. The ship looked more like a giant insect than any spaceship I had seen. It was as black and shiny as the obelisks, with green etchings and runes across the sides of the hull. It was larger than the Dragontooth, but not as large as the Indomitable, by far.
This could be our salvation—the way home.
Tentatively, I touched the smooth surface as Maura also ran her hands along it. It was cold to the touch, as I had expected for something that had been sitting in an underground bunker for centuries.
“I think I found the hatch,” said Maura as something near her clicked and a part of the hull slid away to the side to reveal the interior.
We climbed inside.
The inside was as alien as the outside. Everything was obelisk-black, and the control console was covered from end to end with alien writing. I lost no time getting the computer to translate.
Maura explored the ship further.
“It’s spacious,” she called back to me. “They’ve used the space well. There are several sleeping cabins. No galley. I guess the aliens mostly lived on fruit and didn’t cook much.”
The computer completed the translations. The runes on the control console served the purpose of pointing out the different functions. Good. Everything was clearly labeled, though in alien. That would make learning to fly this thing a little easier. I busied myself trying to memorize the main ones I would need to pilot the ship.
“I’m going to find out if there is a way to fly this thing out of here,” Maura announced, heading for the hatch.
“Good. Thanks.” What a very levelheaded thing to do. I was so glad I had brought her along.
Leo had curled up at my feet and fallen asleep.
Several minutes passed as I tried to commit to memory, using the computer’s translations, which controls did what.
Leo started snoring.
As I began quizzing myself on the alien runes for about the fiftieth time, I was interrupted by the noise of a crash. A moment later, the cave ceiling above us began to slide back, revealing daylight.
Maura had found our exit!
The ceiling continued to slide back like an automated bay door back home, the additional light welcome. Leo woke up and yowled in protest at the light.
I could see Maura standing at the far end of the hangar, a wide smile on her face.
I couldn’t keep the smile from my face, either. We had found ships!
I stuck my head out of the open hatch and called to Maura. “I’m going to try to fly this thing! Want to come aboard?”
Nodding, she hurried back over and climbed aboard.
“Samantha’s computer just translated all the runes on this control console. I’m reasonably sure I know which ones to use for flying.” I paused, considering. “Though if you aren’t comfortable being along for the maiden voyage, you don’t have to be.”
“I’m comfortable,” said Maura with her usual calm. Shutting the hatch, she sat down next to me. “Hand me Samantha’s computer. I can read the translations to you if you forget.”
I handed it to her and we both strapped ourselves in.
I pressed the button to start the engine and held my breath, waiting for the engine to purr to life.
If the engine didn’t work, we would have gotten our hopes up for nothing.
The console glowed brightly, indicating that something was working, at least. Maura pointed to it with a little cry of joy.
But there was no engine purr. None at all. We sat in silence, disappointment heavy in the cockpit.
“Maybe give it a few minutes,” suggested Maura. “Maybe it needs to warm up. Or charge. Or something.”
Leo sat up suddenly.
“Nothing to see here, boy,” I reassured him. “The ship isn’t working.” I unbuckled myself and sat back in the seat.
Maura rose to her feet. “Want to check the others?”
I nodded heavily, getting to my feet and heading for the hatch.
Leo, who hadn’t shown the slightest interest in anything in this cave before, bounded into my seat the moment I got up, letting out another insistent yowl.
I looked expectantly at him.
He shook his head and squinted his eyes at me.
“What is he doing?” asked Maura.
“I haven’t the foggiest. He does a lot of strange things. Come on; let’s check out one of the other ships.”
With an even louder yowl, Leo extended one paw forward towards the controls. Before I could stop him, he gave one of the instruments a hard slap.
The ship shot up like a rocket, out of the cave through the opening and into the sky.
“The ship!” cried Maura as she and I were flung to the floor. “It works! The engines run silent, even inside an atmosphere!”
<
br /> “What did you do?” I asked Leo, scrambling for the controls. “How did you know?” Grabbing the controls, I hauled myself up into one of the seats.
We had risen up out of the ground among rocks, the broken obelisk in the near distance. From the air, I could finally tell what the smooth surface next to it was supposed to be: a landing pad.
The ship remained in the air, hovering. Maura climbed into a seat next to me, strapping herself in.
Leo looked very satisfied with himself.
“Maybe he could hear the engine,” suggested Maura. “Maybe he hears in a different range than we do.”
“You never are going to let on exactly how much you know, are you?” I asked the smug-looking kvyat.
I was overjoyed. The ship was still in running order. We had an escape from Coriolanus!
In the far distance was the oasis, where Samantha and the others waited. She must be getting impatient by now; she hadn’t heard from me via the wrist communicator in a long time. I pointed the nose of the ship towards the oasis and opened the throttle wide.
Chapter 25
“Are you ready?” asked Samantha, her eyes shining with hope and happiness.
“I think so,” I answered, looking around and wiping the sweat from my forehead.
The alien ship, which we had christened the Freedom, sat proudly in the center of the oasis village. We had finished stocking the ship with as much drinking water and food—dried and some fresh—as it could hold. I was sure we had packed enough to last us for three months. Far more than we should need, but I wanted to be prepared if anything were to happen to us in space.
I had taken the ship on several test flights inside the planet’s atmosphere. She handled beautifully. At the first opportunity, I had labeled the controls with English words, because remembering all the alien runes had proved harder than I had expected.
Leo, as if to make up for his earlier brilliance, had spent the last three hours hissing and growling at a neon yellow butterfly that had been fluttering around him.
Now, at last, it was time to leave.
I looked around at the ten alien faces before me, and beyond them to the oasis around us. For the most part, my time here had been a sojourn in paradise. Long days relaxing in the hot spring, nights spent gorging myself on luscious fruits and sleeping in the cool air, the friendship of the kind aliens… it had been wonderful. But I would have to content myself with memories, because it was dangerous to remain here.
Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue) Page 12
