The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE – GETTING READY TO DEPART

  Finally, with some luck with the weather and help from the Finley’s, the last of the cocoons were loaded aboard the Watership. Dr. Macklow made a final dive aboard the Probeship to the chamber filled with seawater and checked the quality of the water with a sample taken from each chamber before they’d begun work. The salinity, temperature and viscosity were correct. The cargo chambers of the storage tank and Watership were sealed and put on automatic controls. Final plans for departure were computed and the flight crew did a thorough check of their massive, fully loaded spacecraft. Lift-off was scheduled for eight days hence, but they had some underwater traveling to do before then.

  The Finley’s would take the Probeship to a safe anchorage that Ben Green had located in the backwaters near Galveston Bay. At the last minute Amos Bright decided to go with them. They would all say their good-byes to the commanders and the Brigade people that were to remain behind. The Finley’s, Perlman’s, Hankinson’s and Betty Franklin would return with Amos Bright via military aircraft to Homestead AFB.

  They would then be driven to the Manta III. Jack Fischer and Phil Doyle would take them out to the Watership. By then Matthew Cummings, the Betters’ and Gabe would have cleaned up their earthly business and be on board. The rest of the Geriatric Brigade, scattered across the galaxy, needed their commanders.

  The commanders gathered in a meeting room with Amos Bright, Beam and two Antareans. It was the first time they’d all been together in nearly eight months. The Mothership was on its way. The discussion centered mainly on the babies and their future. Mothership would bring the means to cocoon the infants and secure the mixed babies and off-planet parents as well. Bernie Lewis assured the commanders that there would be no trouble with Gideon Mersky once the President was informed of the Defense Secretary’s maverick plan. Ruth Charnofsky, as Head Commander and the only human with Antarean citizenship, spoke last. She thanked Amos, Beam and the Antarean crew for their kindness and help in Operation Earthmother. Then she surprised everyone by putting forth a new idea that had been formulating in her keen mind for several days.

  “There is no doubt that Ellie-Mae’s infant girl will have to return to Betch,” she began, her voice talking to no one in particular. It was more a stream of consciousness. “And of course we must anticipate the two other mixed babies, when they arrive, might be faced with the same imperative. But the others, the Earth-human babies…well…I’ve been watching them and listening to them. They telepath to one another, you know. Yes, you know that. They seem to prefer speaking to Rose and those two nice young people downstairs. I think we must consider a very difficult possibility…it is that we might have to leave our babies here on Earth. I think this may be the place where they will grow the best and become whatever God has brought them to us to become.” Then before anyone could comment, she gasped and doubled over in pain. It was not a labor pain. Something was radically wrong. Bess’s thought passed to all the others. Ruth was the Chief of Commanders. Did this mean that because of the special processing and adaptations done to them, the commanders could not bear children?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR – LISTEN TO THE CHILDREN

  Ruth and Panatoy’s baby had been developing well inside the ninety-year-old Chief Commander. At her last examination, five days before the pain began, everything looked normal.

  “Ultrasound is a great tool,” the young doctor, Robert Chollup, from New York’s Albert Einstein Hospital, said to Beam and the medical team assigned to Ruth Charnofsky’s case, “but you have to know what you’re looking for.” His arrogance was exceeded only by his amazing, almost legendary skill as a fetal orthopedic surgeon. Fetal medicine had made slow but substantial progress in the past decade with the advent of high-resolution ultrasound examination procedures and genetic research.

  “No one can be faulted for not noticing these changes, Doctor,” Beam told him. “The baby’s skeletal structure, especially the legs, developed at an abnormally accelerated rate during the past four days.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Chollup agreed, nodding as he examined the ultrasound recording of the fetus taken the week before. “I give you that. But I would have anticipated some additional growth near term just by examining the father. His bone structure is very different from ours. As you can see, the fetus is now growing toward a pattern more in keeping with the ah . . . what is it? Subax?”

  “Yes. Subax,” Beam answered. “Can you do anything to alleviate the problem?”

  “I can’t stop the fetus from developing, unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” Dr. Yee asked.

  “Unless you want to terminate the pregnancy.”

  “That is an option of last resort,” Beam suggested.

  “Well,” the young surgeon said, peering once more at the row of illuminated X-rays displayed on the wall next to him, “let’s have a look again.”

  Beam knew the man had an answer to Ruth’s problem, but she let the surgeon play out his game. “I think we can take a shot at something here. I look upon a fetus as a patient separate from the mother. I treat it as though it were out of the womb. But in this case I think the relief will be temporary. If the fetus continues to develop the way I think it will, we’ll be back in the same boat next week, maybe worse.”

  “Then, Doctor, may I suggest you take care of the short term,” Beam answered curtly, “and I’ll see what I can do about the longer-range problem.” Dr. Chollup smiled at the attractive female Antarean medical officer, acknowledging her with a patronizing tilt of his head. He was unaware her human appearance was only a protective skin covering. Had he any idea that she was reading his thoughts, understanding that the exterior bravado covered his insecurity about this case he might have put aside the pretense. But that was his way and Beam knew it. Let him be what he must, she thought. He is skilled regarding the Earth-human body. That is what Commander Ruth needs now.

  Subax is a tall race, living on a dark, cold planet rich in minerals and medicinal fungi. Their bone structure has evolved to accommodate the high gravity of the huge planet. Notably, their legs are long and muscular. In particular, their femur, the large upper leg thigh bone, and tibia, the main lower leg bone, are twice the weight of human bones and a third longer. The development of these bones in Ruth’s baby had crowded the Subax-Earth-human fetus inside a human womb. The bones were pressing on the base of Ruth’s spine, compressing nerves and threatening paralysis.

  Dr. Chollup prepared Ruth with a local anesthetic. That relieved the pain and relaxed her. He then entered the amniotic sac with delicate instruments guided by a miniature video camera and light at the tip of a needle. The progress of the surgery was followed closely on the high-resolution ultrasound TV monitor. The baby reacted to the intrusion immediately, reaching for the needle and twisting violently in its warm safe fluid world. Dr. Chollup withdrew his instruments.

  After carefully examining the blood flow and heart rate of the fetus, he decided sedation was necessary. “She’s not going to let us in without a fight,” he commented coldly as he inserted the needle again and with cool precision injected the fetus with a mild opiate derivative. The baby had a spasm, and then relaxed. Dr. Chollup then moved quickly to reinsert his instruments and operate. He placed tiny metal pins in the femur and tibia of each leg. Then, in a display of incredible manipulation, he stitched a thin, sterile wire between the pins. When he tightened the wire the baby’s legs bent backward in a froglike manner. When they were bent at about forty-five degrees, he tied off the wire and withdrew. Beam was impressed.

  “That was quite something, Doctor,” she said with professional admiration.

  “Thank you.” His voice and manner were much calmer now. He knew he’d done a good job. His concern was now for the future. “The longer term is now in your hands, Doctor.” That was the first time anyone had called her doctor on Earth. She felt accepted and proud.

  “It’s being taken care of, even as we speak.” Her thoughts then went to the
main nursery on the floor below where Alicia Sanchez and Phillip Margolin were trying to communicate with the more than twenty infants in residence there. But they were having no success. The babies did not understand what the images Alicia and Phillip were trying to project to them meant. Rose Lewis was also in the nursery. More and more, she was the one with whom the babies communicated. Perhaps because she was the only female commander who remained who was not pregnant? They loved when she held them. The older ones were now capable of smiles and laughter, especially when she telepathed love to them.

  “They don’t understand what we want,” Rose told the two young scientists. Then she hit upon an idea. Telepathing up to Beam, she asked if Ruth was recovered enough to be brought down to the nursery. Beam asked Dr. Chollup, who said, “Yes.”

  A few minutes later Ruth Charnofsky was wheeled into the main nursery room, a large pale blue facility with bassinets and cribs in five neat rows concentrated in the center of the room. Along the walls were all manner of emergency equipment, ranging from incubators to complete life-support systems, specially engineered for infants. Off the main room were two laboratories for blood workup and immunization testing as well as genetic follow-up studies. The hospital was gathering quite a mass of data on these special infants.

  “Put her in the middle of the room,” Rose commanded, sensing the babies were beginning to understand they had a chore to do. She then turned her attention to her Chief Commander, “Ruth, honey. How do you feel?”

  “Better. What are you trying to do?”

  “I want to see if we can get these little ones in here to talk to your daughter in there,” she whispered, stroking Ruth’s distended belly.

  “To tell her what? To stop growing?”

  “No. To tell her to stop moving around so much because she’s hurting her mother.”

  “If they can do that, tell them I’ll give them all lollipops tomorrow.”

  “It’s going to have to be a three-way conversation. Open yourself up to them. They’re really quite delightful. But no words. They don’t know many of our words yet. Give them images of Panatoy, the Subax, long legs, of your pain…whatever you can send them to tell the story.”

  “And then?” Ruth asked, whispering back to her fellow commander.

  “And then they will send their thoughts to your baby . . . I hope.”

  Ruth began to reach out mentally to the babies around her. At first she felt nothing. Then, after a moment, she experienced a delightful, lightheaded sensation. Her mind was full of sparkling colors and laughter. There was joy in her heart. She was in the children’s minds, innocence and love as they came to hers. She sent an image of the baby girl in hr womb and the problem they were having. She sent images of what the doctor had done to keep the long legs away from her spine. Then, for a moment, the children left her conscious mind. When they returned only one came forward. It was the first-born girl, the daughter of the Messina’s, whose name was Melody. Ruth felt her baby stir inside her. She then heard a stream of language that sounded like a song or chant; but in tongues - the babble that some possessed people, caught up in religious fervor, spew forth. Melody’s conversation with Ruth’s unborn daughter flowed through her. Then it ended abruptly. She had the sensation of her baby turning, adjusting her body. Then a voice...

  “In one week take away the wires,” Melody said. “She will lie still and not hurt you after that. She loves you.”

  Beam explained what was to happen to Dr. Chollup. At first he didn’t accept her explanation that the babies communicated the procedure. But then Beam continued the story without speaking words and the good doctor understood that the universe held many secrets and wonders beyond his ken.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE – WATERSHIP AWAY

  The Manta III arrived above the six-hundred foot wreck. It was time to say thanks and bid good-bye to Jack Fischer, Phil Doyle and Madman Mazuski.

  “This time we are not as rushed to say farewell,” Amos said to Jack after embracing the charter boat captain. “No old Earth-human jumping overboard.” They all laughed, remember that night five years ago when they made a hasty departure while being pursued.

  “You got that right,” Mazuski chuckled. “No Coast Guard choppers tryin’ to shoot me down.”

  “Hey, guys” Jack said, extending his hand to the Finley’s and Perlman’s. “You guys take it easy now. No too many space walks.” He hugged Betty Franklin and the Hankinson’s. “Good luck. Safe journeys.” He turned back to Amos Bright. “And the next time you’re coming, give us a little head’s up. We’ll get you some decent digs.”

  The visitors began to slip over the side and swim down to the Watership six hundred feet below. Amos embraced Jack again.

  “I am forever in your debt. May the Master watch over you...all three of you.”

  “Thanks, Amos. Just remember we’ve got a date in about forty years or so...”

  “That is my promise, dear friend. Farewell.” He dove over the side and disappeared into the depths of the Atlantic.

  A short while later, they were ready to begin the journey home. Light years across the Milky Way Galaxy, an entire planetary civilization on Antares waited to welcome home their brothers and sisters who had been asleep in their cocoons for over five thousand Earth years. The mission that had begun five Earth years ago was finally going to be completed.

  The last operation to be done before departure was to bring the Parman guides inside from their chlorine chamber atop the flight deck. The storage tank, filled with the sleeping Antarean cocoons suspended in seawater, was safely attached beneath the Watership. Three of the flight crew helped the last of the glowing green Parman guides into the main deck. There were six of them, alert and satiated, ready to bring the Watership to Antares, or rather Antares to the Watership, depending on how one thought about travel with Parman guides.

  In a brief ceremony before leaving their ocean bottom mooring near Boynton Beach, Amos introduced the Parman guides to the new passengers aboard. Having spent years on Parma Quad 2, the Finley’s, Perlman’s, Hankinson’s and Betty Franklin knew their race to be open and giving beings. But for Cummings, the Betters’ and Gabe, although they’d been processed and their senses enhanced, Parmans were only the second non-Earth-human life form they’d encountered. The Antareans had shed their human coverings and the three new space travelers adjusted to their ephemeral appearance. The translucency of their skin and lack of facial features was hardly alien as their presence was strong and assuring.

  The Parmans are crystal-base beings with the green quartz-like covering and amorphous shape similar to crystalline structures on Earth. But they did have language, and projected waves of friendship and trust. Gabe greeted them first. He smiled, newly budding teeth popping through his now pink gums.

  “Calimera,” he said. “Good morning.”

  “Calimera,” the Parman nearest answered.

  “Hey,” Gabe chirped out, “these guys speak Greek.”

  “They can speak any language, if you teach them. They enjoy learning,” Amos told the three newcomers. “We play a kind of game with them. We give them a new thought, a new idea for us, and they give us one back.”

  “I never thought I’d ever talk to a crystal,” Coolridge Betters said aloud.

  “Nor I a policeman,” the Parman nearest to him answered.

  “I think you all look beautiful,” Paige Betters said.

  “We cannot look the way you do. But we know of your beauty from within.”

  “And I never thought I’d be going traveling in space,” Matthew Cummings said to the largest and oldest Parman guide.

  “You are not yet,” it answered, “and if we do not depart promptly, this old crystal will need another feeding.”

  Amos laughed as he removed his four molecule thick human covering. He then gave the order to the flight crew to begin the journey. Ahead of them, the nuclear submarine USS Schulman also moved east, running a mile or so in front of the Watership. It would keep an eye and ear out fo
r intruders who might detect the huge Antarean craft deep beneath the surface. Above, the USS Hapsas, USS Metz and USS Simi also got underway, all heading due east toward the mid-Atlantic Ridge.

  Two days later, after being shadowed by the Soviet submarine Pomorze and its companion guided-missile cruiser Novosobirsk, the Watership cover fleet reached its destination. Throughout the journey the American and Soviet vessels played a game of cat and mouse. But instead of the American ships and submarine, the Soviets were confounded by the huge metallic mass that filled their sonar screens. Playfully, the Antarean flight crew electronically changed the shape of their craft. At times it was another submarine. Then a mountain ridge…a school of blue whales and, at times it completely disappeared. The captain of Pomorze reported to his fleet command that the Americans had developed a new, sophisticated sonar jamming device.

  The Watership took leave of its escort, bidding Captain Walkly and the Navy Seal team that had been transferred from the Orca to the USS Simi, farewell. The Watership then dove rapidly to the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean where no submarine could dive and where no sonar could see them. Three and a half miles down they reached the mountain peaks of the mid-ocean range. They continued diving they reached the valley floor and the mid-ocean rift, an area of volcanic activity and geothermal upheaval. This was the place where two tectonic plates met. The Watership followed the rift valley north, steadily increasing speed, slowly engaging its ion drives. The pressure outside the spacecraft was hundreds of thousands of pounds per square inch, capable of crushing almost any manmade object. But the Watership was built to withstand pressure many times this load. It moved through the ocean depths as though it were air.

  As they neared Greenland, where the volcanic activity increased, they turned northeast, skirting Iceland, up into the Greenland Sea, then under the thinning summer pack-ice, due north toward the magnetic north pole. At the predetermined time and place calculated by Phillip Margolin and Alicia Sanchez, the Watership engaged full power to its ion engines and sped toward the surface. It exploded through the pack-ice and soared into the bright arctic summer sky. The flight crew overdrove the ion engines so that an excess of negatively charged electrons flooded the atmosphere behind it. It sped away from the Earth at incredible speed. By the time human detection devices recorded it, it was gone. All that remained was a negatively charged image – a polar anomaly. The Soviets chalked it up to electric disturbance. The Chinese listed it as a solar disturbance that activated the Earth’s northern magnetic field. The American observers on station in Greenland and along the Canadian DEW line filed a variety of reports. Among them, one young Air Force lieutenant with an active imagination suggested it was a UFO that has been submerged under the ice-pack.