"Right here," Juliet said.
"You'd better come up to the command center right away," Barbara said. "We're getting a signal, a strong one, from somewhere between here and your moon."
Mike and Barbara were sitting at the communications console, listening to a loud, strange, almost musically modulated signal.
"What is that," Mike Donovan asked, "a Visitor version of heavy-metal rock?"
"No," Barbara said as Juliet and Martin came in. "It's a distress call."
"But who could be sending it?" Julie asked.
"There's only one person I can think of," Martin said, "and that's Diana."
"He's right," Barbara agreed. "And only an escape shuttle has a transmitter powerful enough to send a signal that strong."
"And as far as we know," Donovan said, "there are no other escape shuttles out there, so it has to be Diana." Martin nodded. "Can you tell what she's saying?"
Barbara punched buttons on the console. "I'm afraid not," she said. "It sounds like a standard code, but the computer can't translate it."
"Then it's not just a call for help," Martin said. "That would be broadcast in the clear." He reached over Barbara's shoulder and touched a few more buttons. "No good," he went on. "That's a high security signal, for ship's commanders only."
"But who can she be calling?" Juliet asked. "Can that signal reach all the way to Sirius?"
"No," Barbara answered. "It can't even get to the rest of the fleet. They're all well out of range by now."
"Take a fix on it," Mike told her. "Once we get this ship running again, I want to go pick her up. She has a lot to answer for."
Barbara bent over the console. "It's like I said," she told them. "It's coming from a place about a quarter of the way between here and your moon. But it's going toward the moon, not Earth."
Chapter 2
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 2
The sun was setting over a calm Pacific Ocean as the rebel trucks pulled into their lighthouse base. Robert Maxwell was among the first to jump out of the back of the lead truck, eager to see to the welfare of his children. A woman on guard at the base of the lighthouse shouted a greeting to them and disappeared inside. Before Robert could get to the door; Robin, his eldest daughter, came running out to meet him. She threw herself into her father's arms.
"Oh, Father" she cried, "we were so worried." He swung her around once and put her down.
"We had a few casualties," he told her gently, "but we won. Steven is dead, the Visitor Headquarters is empty." Behind him, other trucks were stopping, and other rebels were helping the wounded out. "How are Polly and Katie?" he asked.
Robin watched with growing concern as rebels helped their friends toward the building that served as their hospital. "They're inside," she said. "So many wounded?"
"Most of them are just hung over," Robert said, laughing. He put his arm around his daughter and went into the lighthouse. He barely got in the door when Polly and Katie came running up. He grabbed them both, laughing and weeping at the same time.
"Is it really all over," Polly asked when she could speak again.
"I think so," Robert said. "I surely hope so."
"Except," Ham Tyler said from behind him, "for putting the world back together again." He turned to Maxwell. "Some of our people confiscated all the electronics from Visitor Headquarters. We'll need a place to set it up."
"We've got some room in the garage next door," a woman rebel with long, dark hair said. It was Alice Reynolds. "Is Chris ail right?"
"I am now," Chris Faber said, coming in through the door. For a man of his bulk, he moved with surprising speed and grace. He enveloped Alice in an enthusiastic embrace, and then went back out with her to supervise the handling of the Visitor equipment.
"I think everything's going to be all right," Robert said to his daughters.
"Except for Elizabeth," Robin said. "We haven't heard a word from the Mother Ship."
"Nothing at all?" Robert asked.
"No, Father. Linda's been scanning all the possible channels."
"Where is she now?" Robert asked.
"We've got everything set up on the second floor," Robin said, and went with him as he mounted the central stairs.
Linda McReady sat among a clutter of radio equipment, some of it of earthly manufacture, some of it captured Visitor devices. Several speakers emitted voices, their volumes turned down, each set to a different channel, while at the same time Linda listened to a single earphone clipped over her head. She set the tuner to one wavelength, listened a moment, then turned the dial slightly. Several tape recorders were going beside her, picking up the broadcasts received from other tuners. She looked up as Robert and Robin Maxwell entered her cluttered office.
"Any word at all from Donovan?" Robert asked.
"I'm sorry," Linda said. "Of course, with only a skeleton crew here, I might have missed something. You can play back the tapes if you like."
they can't all be dead," Robin said. "Elizabeth is still up there- with them."
I know, Binna," her father said, "but all we know for sure is that the ship left along with the others. It could be on its way to Sinus by now."
"Oh, Father, don't say that."
I know it's not easy to accept," Robert said, "but you have to be prepared for the worst."
What I'm worried about," Linda said, "is all those people the Visitors had stored in the hold. Elizabeth is half Visitor, robin, but to the aliens the others are just cattle, to be slaughtered and eaten."
Alice Reynolds and another rebel came in at that moment.
"Linda," Alice said, "let Joseph take over for a while. Come and see what we've got."
Linda took off her earphone and handed it to the young man With Alice. "What is it?" she asked.
"All the equipment from Visitor Headquarters," Alice told her.
"Holy shit," Linda said, "this I've got to see." She started to the door, then turned back to Robert and Robin. "Come on," she said. "If anything can make contact with Mike and Julie, this stuff should." They all hurried out, leaving Joseph lo tend the tuners.
Benches were crowded with pieces of Visitor electronics. I he far wall of the garage had been cleared, and there a Makeshift set of racks was being constructed to hold it all. Jason Cunningham was supervising the construction, while Ian Browne and Markos Dimitrios directed other rebels who were bringing in yet more. Linda, Alice, Robert, and Robin came over to watch.
"Are you responsible for this?" Robert Maxwell asked Jason.
"I couldn't leave it behind," Jason said half defensively.
"It's terrific," Robert said "I didn't even know it was there."
Chris Faber came in, carrying a particularly large device which consisted of a flat screen and a set of knobs. Ian showed him where to put it while Markos and two women pulled up another bench.
"I know what that is," Linda McReady said, pointing to one of the pieces of electronics. "I've got one just like it upstairs, but it's broken."
"A communicator?" Alice asked as Jason Cunningham turned to listen in.
"Right. But there are a couple other components that should be hooked up to it."
"Yes," Jason said. "You're right, there were." He looked over the chaos on the benches. "There's one," he said, pointing, and Linda went to it. "I'll show you how it was connected. I took that one apart myself."
"This one too," Ian Browne said, holding out something the size of a cassette player. There were no controls, only a horse's tail of colored wires sprouting from the back.
"This is fantastic," Robert Maxwell said. "How soon do you think you can get it working?"
"Ten or fifteen minutes, maybe," Linda answered. "This is obviously first priority."
"You've got it," said Robert. "Because,
look, if Donovan and Julie are all right, if they do bring the ship back, we're going to have a real problem on our hands. Those ten thousand human beings in the ship's hold will have to be brought back down to Earth and reprocessed."
"That's right," Linda said, "and the only place they can do that is the plant north of Pomona, where the Visitors were putting those people into suspended animation in the first place."
"So, what I figure," Robert Maxwell said, "is that that's where Donovan and Julie will come down—assuming of course that they're still alive." He turned and grabbed Chris, who had just brought in another piece of equipment that looked like a cross between a video game and an old-fashioned radio.
"Where's Ham?" he asked. "We're going to have to get out to the suspension plant."
"He's at the infirmary," Chris said. "I'll tell him. We'll be ready to move out in an hour."
"But we can't leave here," Robin said. "What if they call us from the ship?"
We won't all be going," Linda said. "I'll be staying here to work with the electronics. You think I'm going to let this stuff just sit?"
"Me too," Jason Cunningham said. "We've got a gold mine here, and if I can figure out how even one percent of it works, we'll revolutionize the communications industry. And besides, there are the children. We'll need some people to look after litem."
All right," Robin said, "but if Mike lands at the suspension plant, I want to be there."
No," her father told her. "We don't know how many Visitors might still be there. We may have to fight to take the
place."
"But the toxin," Robin wailed. "Won't that have killed them all?"
"It will eventually, but there isn't that much in the air, and I lie wind direction has been away from the plant all day. I'm sorry, Binna, but if we have to fight again, I don't want you
there."
"We'll keep in touch," Alice Reynolds reassured her; looking up from something with a keyboard. She went over to mother bench at the side and picked up a standard army-issue i .ulio. "Channel fourteen," she said as she handed it to Robert. T.ither Joseph or I will be listening at all times."
"Oh, Father," Robin said, "I wish you didn't have to go out again."
"So do I, sweetheart, but this won't be like the last time. You can help out by spelling Linda on the radio now and then."
"1 will," Robin said.
Chris Faber came back in. "We're ready to roll," he said. At least those of us who didn't overindulge back at Visitor headquarters."
"I'll call you as soon as I get there," Robert said to Linda as lie held up the army radio. Then he joined Chris, who cast a longing glance at Alice before they both left for the trucks.
Linda McReady, Alice Reynolds, and Jason Cunningham sat in front of the jury-rigged wall of alien devices. Ian Browne and Markos Dimitrios were fitting the last of them in place, though there were still hundreds of wires hanging out. Unlike the installation at Visitor Headquarters, there was plenty of space between each device to allow the rebels to make connections as they figured things out.
"I'm not sure where most of this goes," Jason said. "If I'd had time, I'd have drawn a diagram and labeled each piece, but as it is, all I can do is guess. At least we know that everything once fit together in an unbroken mosaic, without the large gaps we have now. Maybe between us we can eventually get it all put back together the way it was."
"Even if we can't," Alice said, "we know which parts belong to the communicator." She turned to another rebel who had just come up. "How's the power, Wilma?" she asked.
"We're all set," Wilma Corrigan answered. "We had to install a few new fuse boxes, but I think we can handle the load."
"Great." Alice turned back to the racks of electronics. "Let that other stuff go," she told Browne and Dimitrios. "I want to see if the communicator works."
Markos stepped aside while Ian tightened one more screw.
"That should do it," Ian said. He went over to an improvised switch box fastened to a side wall. "Let's hope we don't blow everything out on the first try." He pulled the master switch, and here and there among the equipment lights started coming on.
"Nothing exploded," Linda McReady said, "and the communicator seems to be working." She got up from her chair and with Jason Cunningham at her side, started fiddling with the controls. Speakers set on benches nearby started emitting hisses, then clicks, then whistles and moans.
"So far so good," Jason said. "Let's cut out anything we don't need at the moment." He went along one side and Alice the other. Hesitantly at first but gradually with more confidence, each turned off as much of the equipment as he or she could. Linda kept on fiddling with the knobs until suddenly a loud, strange, almost musically modulated signal burst forth from the speakers. Hastily she reach for a large dial and turned the gain down.
"What in hell is that?" Ian Browne asked.
' Nothing of ours," Linda said, "so it must be from the Mother Ship."
It sounds like some kind of code," Markos said. "Would Julie be broadcasting in code?"
"Not this kind of code," Alice answered. She stepped away I mm the electronics wall and brought up a wheeled cart. On it were tape recorders and a small computer. She connected i .ililes from the cart to the electronics wall. "We'll record everything and see if the computer can make any sense out of it." she explained, "but I suspect what we have is a Visitor signal of some kind."
"That means Mike and Julie were only partially success-ful," Ian said.
They heard a gasp from the shadows. "No," Robin said as she came out into the light, "that can't be."
"You shouldn't be here," Alice said, going to comfort her. "Besides, we really don't know what that signal means."
"Can you call them?" Robin asked. "Can you send back and ask?"
"I don't know," Linda McReady said, "but we sure as hell aie going to try." She picked up a microphone and plugged the eord into the communicator while Alice Reynolds started the recorders going.
"This is rebel base," Linda said into the mike. "Come in, Mike Donovan. Come in, Juliet Parrish." Alice started typing at the computer's console. The sound of the strange musical signal continued unchanged. Linda fiddled with her dials. "Come in," she called again, but there was no answer.
In the bowels of the Mother Ship, engines of incomprehensible design, gleaming crystal, bright chrome, and dead black hung in a space far larger than the Astrodome. Catwalks, mere spiderwebs by comparison, ran from one pendant machine to another, connecting the bulges, fins, spines, and coils. In the center of the web was a platform hundreds of feet above the shadowed deck. Thirty feet in diameter, it held consoles, panels, and banks of lights which were now all dark. In the center, Caleb Taylor, Sancho Gomez, and the fifth columnist William stood with drawn weapons while six of the Visitor trustee technicians, each with a fifth columnist supervisor, inspected the equipment.
At one point a front panel had been removed, and the technician had inserted a long, silvery probe into the innards, reading the dials on the end he held. At another place a technician had connected wires to circuit buses, which in turn were connected to a hand-held meter. Elsewhere, other technicians were testing, probing, reading, trying to find out what had gone wrong and how to fix it.
Sancho kept fingering his rifle. "It makes me nervous," he said. "They could blow up this whole ship."
"No way," Caleb said. "If they were that sloppy, some careless technician would have done it long ago."
"That's right," William agreed. "I don't know how the engines work, but all our equipment has safeguards built in, just like at the cryogenic plants on Earth."
"That's not exactly reassuring," Caleb said, remembering the accident from which William had saved him.
"I know these people," William said, "at least some of them. They're like me, not like Diana. And anyway, if they really wanted to kill us, all they'd have to do is nothing."
"Or else," Sancho said, "fix it so the engines couldn't be repaired."
"That's why we'
ve got people we can trust looking over their shoulders," Caleb Taylor said. Still, he was nervous too. He went up to one of the fifth columnists who was supervising a woman trustee. The technician had opened up a control panel, swinging it to one side like a door, and was holding a large computerlike device in front of it. No wires or probes connected her sensor with the inner workings, but the screen of the device showed changing alien symbols.
"How's it going, Scott?" Caleb asked her fifth columnist guard.
"It's not as bad as it might be," Scott answered. "Acceleration through your atmosphere simply caused excessive vibration, resulting in an electrothermal conduction which degaussed the gravity coils. Nothing has shorted, fortunately, though the lambda alignment is way off and polarity has reversed in several condensors."
"Great. Now, what exactly does that mean?"
it means we don't have to use any replacement parts but can just retune the circuits."
Thanks. So how long do you think that will take?" Just a couple of hours. First we have to isolate the faulty Input channels and redirect the oscillator bus. We can't shut the whole thing down, which would be easier, or we'd lose power altogether."
"And what would that do?" All the lights would go out and suffocation would follow within fifteen minutes."
No, we don't want to do that. But tell me, if you know that much about it, how come you're not doing it yourself?"
"Have you ever rebored the engine in your own car?" I get the point. Okay, but is there any way one of these technicians could blow up the ship with what they're doing?"
"Not at all. The worst that could happen would be to permanently disable the two engines we're working on." Thanks for the reassurance," Caleb said dryly.
"You needn't worry," Scott told him. "None of these people want to die, and they're not political fanatics."
"I'll have to take your word for it," Caleb Taylor said and went back to rejoin his friends. "Scott's got everything under i ontrol," he told them, and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
Juliet Parrish and Mike Donovan sat in the command center, holding hands, watching while Martin directed fifth columnists and other trustee technicians working at various control consoles. The process of flushing the contaminated atmosphere out of the ship was well under way, and only a few areas of the ship's atmospheric display panel were still red. Among those, of course, were the compartments in which the bodies of the Visitor soldiers had been temporarily stored.
V03 - The Pursuit of Diana Page 3
