The Universe Next Door: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller (Jake Corby Series Book 3)

by Al Macy

  “Enough! Be stopping now,” Falbex shouted. A set of holocontrols sat in front of him, indistinguishable from physical controls. He tapped a joystick to one side, and Resourceful began tumbling slowly, debris spewing out from the sliced-off corner.

  “Perfect.” Guccio gave a thumbs up. “It sure looks dead to me.”

  “Acceleration,” the large zealo shouted.

  Each occupant of the bridge was grabbed by an unseen force and slammed into the cylindrical devices behind them. A force field squeezed me and yanked me to a shimmery crash couch. Guccio slammed into his own couch with a grunt. Here we go again.

  Whap! The acceleration was much harder this time. I grunted and squeezed my legs and butt. Breathing was impossible. Did this captain know our limitations? I counted the seconds. Five … six … seven. Tunnel vision. Where was I? It stopped. I breathed deeply and rubbed my face.

  “Good for you, too?” Guccio looked terrible and held his face in his hands.

  The large zealo stepped from his disportion unit and ruffled his feathers. “Now we wait. I am Captain Zorb, and I am welcoming you to my ship, gentlemen. We are presently going to kick some buttocks.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I turned to Marbecka. “What happened to us? When we transferred?”

  “I have sorrow on this, Jake. We had major problems while moving equipment between ships. It was exceedingly fubar. The force field system failed. Your container caught the lip of the deck as it was ejected. That caused it to spin and disrupted its trajectory. It collided with the top of the cargo hatch of this ship, Nasty, and bounced back into space. Three astronauts performed an EVA and rescued you. I am in apology for the rough journey.”

  “Enemy ship approaching.” The crest of one of the zealos popped up. He was the only celano I’d seen with a red beak.

  Zorb modified the zoom level of the holoviewer. The alien ship closed in on Resourceful, slowing.

  Guccio frowned. “What was his rate of deceleration?”

  Captain Zorb gave a headshake. “Fifty-two g’s.”

  I whistled. “Can your ships do that?”

  “Engine-wise, yes and more. But not with beings in residence. Those are some fucking-tough aliens.”

  “What is their distance from Resourceful now?” Guccio’s unlit cigar jiggled as he spoke.

  Falbex answered. “He’s now at seventeen kilometers. In the last encounter, they didn’t fire until they were at eight kilometers. He is inchworming in now.” A representation of the enemy ship appeared on the edge of the hologram.

  Guccio nodded. “Are you ready?”

  “The program has been loaded into Resourceful’s computer, and now we will only watch.”

  Resourceful continued to tumble and eject debris. Obviously disabled.

  “And the energy bursts don’t travel at the speed of light?”

  “No, Sir Guccio, they are quite lackadaisical in comparison.” Falbex rocked back and forth on his two claws. “Almost zero time now.”

  The tension built in my legs and arms, and I wanted to get up and pace.

  Two pulses of energy burst from the alien craft, resembling miniature stars, heading toward Resourceful almost too fast for the eye to follow.

  Resourceful came to life. Under computer control, it shot up at an angle to the incoming bursts. The pulses changed course, like tracking missiles, but not quickly enough. Resourceful continued then altered its course and headed directly toward the alien craft. With no fragile beings aboard, it didn’t need to limit its acceleration.

  The enemy ship—I could imagine its captain saying “oops”—accelerated off at an angle to Resourceful’s approach. Not fast enough. The two vessels collided and spun off along different paths. Squawking burst out, and Gordon and I exchanged high fives. The event took only seconds. Our warrior’s playing-possum stratagem had worked perfectly.

  “Can we replay that in slow—” I froze, looking at the hologram.

  An alarm rang out.

  “Two incoming energy bursts!” Red-beak yelled.

  The bursts that had missed Resourceful were now headed for us. They must have been self-guiding, since we’d destroyed their mother ship.

  Captain Zorb yelled, “Acceleration. Evasion.”

  Once again all of the dinobirds were sucked into their disportion units. Force fields grabbed Guccio and me, slamming us into our crash couches. This time, however, instead of one sustained acceleration, we were jerked this way and that as Nasty attempted to evade the incoming energy bursts. The evil stars followed our every move.

  Not pleasant. It was like being in a spasmodic clothes dryer.

  In between the highest acceleration periods, I watched the play-by-play on the holoviewer. We looked like a seal evading a pair of relentless sharks. I gritted my teeth. The speed of the action suggested computers controlled everything, on both sides. It would have been amusing had I not been expecting to die in a fiery explosion.

  All acceleration halted, and we transitioned to zero g’s. The force field didn’t let go of me, however. The two energy bursts were on opposite sides of the ship, everything in a line. They both accelerated toward us. Is this the end? At the last instant, we zipped out from between them like a watermelon seed squeezed between two fingers.

  Surely the two bursts would annihilate one another. No, they were soon back on our tail. I did get the impression they were slowing down, becoming less energetic. Perhaps we were winning this cat-and-mouse game.

  After another frenetic, tumbling evasion, we slowed down, and I once again had a clear view of the hologram. The two bursts were slower, running out of energy. Phew! But my relief was short-lived. They merged into one and seemed to regain their original power level.

  We took off again at one of our highest accelerations, perhaps more than five g’s. I rolled my eyes up to watch the display, my vision fading. The pulse was clearly gaining on us. Nasty shot beams toward it. Some must have hit, because the pulse slowed. Surely we could get away from it now.

  It continued to follow, closer than it had ever been. The representation of our ship veered away sharply, but the burst followed as if it had anticipated our move. I gritted my teeth. C’mon, c’mon.

  The burst merged with the ship’s image, and I was thrown across the bridge. The hologram disappeared, the lights went out, and after a bunch of snaps, the dinobirds went silent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I rubbed my forehead. A bump the size of a chicken’s egg sat above my left eyebrow. We were in total darkness. The craft must have been spinning, because I was held against one wall of the bridge. “Gordon, you okay?”

  “I’m alive.”

  “Are you—”

  “I can’t move my legs.” He spoke barely above a whisper.

  I crawled along the wall toward the sound of his voice. When I raised my head up, dizziness washed over me, another sign we were spinning rather than accelerating.

  I reached Guccio and put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s too early to tell. You’re probably okay.” Did my voice hold more conviction than I felt?

  I got up on my knees and shouted, “Marbecka? … Falbex? … Anyone here?”

  Silence. Emergency lighting switched on—dim red light. Good, the ship wasn’t completely dead. The smell of an electrical fire drifted into the bridge.

  I looked around. We were alone. The pill-shaped pods that had lined the walls were gone. I went to one of the empty spaces and felt around inside. The space above it was some kind of tube. Had they all abandoned ship? Those were the snaps I’d heard. Probably all under computer control.

  I crawled around the perimeter of the bridge, on the wall. Gravity seemed a bit stronger on one side, perhaps half a g. I squatted down and jumped toward the center. I landed on the other side headfirst, narrowly missing Guccio.

  My conclusion, based on my vast experience in disabled spaceships: The bridge was almost centered in the spacecraft, which was spinning like a record on a turntable. The inter-deck passageway was dead cente
r in the axis of rotation. As on a playground merry-go-round, the farther I was from the center of rotation, the stronger the force on my body.

  A wave of nausea passed over me. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Do Not. Throw. Up.

  I put a hand on Guccio’s shoulder. “It’s just you and me, buddy.”

  “Not good.”

  An understatement. Alone on an alien spacecraft in a parallel universe. “Are you bleeding anywhere?”

  “No.”

  I nodded. “I’m going to take a look around.”

  What I wouldn’t give for some aspirin. Or Vicodin. Pain radiated out from the Easter egg on my forehead.

  The air still seemed fresh, but I didn’t know how quickly it would deteriorate if life support was offline. It was a huge ship with only two occupants. The air would last for a long time. Right?

  I climbed to the inter-deck well—a stairwell but without the stairs. I looked down and then up. The well itself was not lit, but red light shined into it from individual decks.

  I counted six decks in each direction. Again, the bridge seemed to be near the midpoint of the ship. That made sense. The safest spot. Those escape pods, if that’s what they were, must have shot along some tubes before getting ejected from the ship. All celanos were about the same size. I guess when everyone eats only the food their species evolved to eat, obesity isn’t an issue.

  I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Some way to signal for help, maybe. If we were going to be here a while, we’d need food. Gordon and I could live on birdseed and grubs if I could find the cafeteria. The walls held signs, but of course they were in celano.

  I chose one direction and pushed off, totally weightless while floating in the center of the passageway. In fact, even if I drifted toward a wall, I was weightless, the walls rotating around me. When I grabbed something and spun around with the ship, I took on weight. Fascinating. And nauseating.

  I didn’t have any birds to come and grab me if I drifted into danger.

  I figured my priorities were water and food. A radio would have been nice. One with English writing and a big button saying “Push to Talk” or just “Help!” Or maybe someone had stayed behind. “Hello! Anybody here?”

  I passed the cargo deck. The huge hatch to space was now closed. The paratransit device looked undamaged.

  On the next two decks, hallways led from the inter-deck well. Maybe crew quarters? Offices? Those on one side were closed off. Perhaps the ship had been damaged, and they’d been sealed to prevent air loss.

  The next deck held a large chamber with—bingo—vending machines along the sides. As long as they didn’t require coins or other payment, I was in business.

  I lay on the side of the passageway looking “down” into the cafeteria. I smiled, impressed at how well I’d gotten the hang of microgravity. With a tiny push off, I launched myself into the chamber.

  Stupid, stupid! The instant I let go, I realized my error and flailed in an attempt to spin around and grab the lip of the entrance.

  Didn’t work.

  I drifted toward the far wall. All good, except that as I floated, the side wall of the cafeteria caught up. One of the vending machines nudged into me. I was still moving slowly, and the collision wasn’t bad. But that machine was accelerating me, pushing me in the direction of the ship’s spin, like a malevolent force laughing at my stupidity.

  I’d never given centrifugal force much thought but instantly understood it all too well. Like floating above a playground merry-go-round, as long as I didn’t touch it, I’d be fine. But as soon as I grabbed on to part of it, I’d spin around, feeling the force throwing me away from the center. And the farther from the center, the stronger the force.

  I gripped the edge of the machine but couldn’t hold on. Too rounded. I tumbled farther toward the wall farthest from the center of rotation, accelerating as I fell.

  I pushed off toward the center of the room, grabbing for one of the ubiquitous perches. I wrapped my thumb and middle finger around it but couldn’t hold on.

  Floating free, I looked down between my feet at the approaching far wall.

  Impact in three, two, one, bang! Both feet hit a drink machine, and my knees smashed up into my chest. Oof! Rolling off, I ended up wedged between two machines, each the size of a refrigerator. Now I weighed maybe two hundred to three hundred pounds as if wearing an unreasonably heavy backpack.

  The machines did indeed seem to hold food in convenient packets, but I had to get out of this gravity well. Even lying still was tiring. I needed to hurry.

  When I was a kid, I’d sometimes do a handstand against the wall of our living room and imagine the house was upside down. I could imagine how it would be to walk along the ceiling and climb through the doors.

  I could still see this cafeteria in its normal configuration: perches on the floor and vending machines lining the walls. But because of the spin-based gravity, I felt as if I were at the bottom of a narrow canyon.

  The vending machines, a lot like the ones on normal Earth, were all dead. No power, no food. So this whole exercise was useless. Time was running out. I struggled to my feet and walked along the fronts of the machines toward the side wall, planning to climb up and out of the room. A package caught my eye. It lay between two of the machines. Breathing hard now, I reached down and pulled it to me.

  It was the size of a bag of chips. I tore it open. Inside were nuts and seeds. I tasted a few. Not bad. This would work. I imagined the celanos dropping everything and rushing to battle stations. The packs left behind all slid down to the bottom of my canyon. I harvested a few more packs, and some balls that held liquid, and stuffed them in my jumpsuit. Now I weighed even more.

  Time to climb out along the dispensers lining the side wall. The perches, like low hitching posts, rose from the floor in scattered locations. They were too far from one another for me to use. The ceiling was smooth.

  Unfortunately, the corners of the vending machines were all rounded. There was nothing to hold on to. But each had a food hatch in the center. The hatches were closed, but a narrow lip on each gave me a finger width’s grip. It would have to do.

  From the rear corner of the room I reached up to the second machine and got my fingers onto the hatch lip. Then I put one foot on the lip of the machine below that one. Holding myself right up against the units, I gritted my teeth, pushed with my foot, and pulled with my hands. Sweat dripped down into my eyes. My foot slipped off the lip, and I fell back down.

  I rested and thought things through. I could just wait here. The celanos would surely send a rescue ship unless they had lost the war. But I didn’t want to leave Guccio alone, especially with his paralyzed legs.

  I tried again, and this time it worked. One machine down, about ten to go. I got the hang of it, and things got easier as I went. At the top, I was almost weightless. It was a long jump from the topmost machine to the inter-deck well. If I missed, I’d slide back down and have to climb back again. I wasn’t sure I could do it again, so I took a few minutes to rest, and visualized my jump. I’d always been good at visualizing. Movements were a little strange in this rotational-gravity environment.

  Once I’d caught my breath, I squatted down on the machine and pushed off, aiming for the center of the room’s door. I got that now-familiar vertigo twinge but sailed through the opening. I gave a little “Yes!” cheer. I pushed off a side wall and flew back to the bridge.

  Flipping in through the bridge doorway, I said, “I hope you like seeds, Gordon, because—”

  Guccio was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I called out, “Gordon?” The light was dim, but there was no question about it. He wasn’t on the bridge.

  I climbed back to the between-decks shaft, cupped my hands beside my mouth, and yelled, “Gordon?” first in one direction and then the other.

  “Yo!”

  It came from about five decks up. I squinted in that direction. There he was, floating in the dim, red glow of a doorway.
Phew! I pushed off and floated to him. “Hey, you gave me a scare, man. What—”

  “Look at this.” He pointed to his feet and waggled them.

  “Wow. Good.” I clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, they’re kinda weak, but I’m not paralyzed. I have a herniated or bulging disk in my back, and the banging around must have done something to it. Anyway, you were gone for a while, so I decided to look around. Check this out.” He pulled me over to the door of what was certainly a maintenance shop. “I would have gone in, but the centrifugal force would have spun me to the bottom, and I’d be stuck there.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  He frowned and cocked his head.

  “Long story.”

  “Find any food?”

  I pulled out the food packs, and we ate nuts, pressed up against the walls of the passageway.

  Mealtime over, we lay on the edge of the passageway and looked into the workroom like two boys peering into a hole. The room was much smaller than the cafeteria. Drawers and cabinets filled one wall. Equipment, such as axes, rope, pliers, and hammers, fit neatly into custom recesses on a tool board. Those tools could come in handy.

  “Huh, look at those.” I nodded toward a side wall.

  “Space suits. So?”

  “See those two on the end? They’re bigger than the others and not the right shape for celanos. They’re—”

  “For humans.”

  “Bingo. Those could save our lives if it gets cold or if we run out of air. I’ll drop in.” I pointed to the other side. “I think I can climb out over the stuff on that wall, but if not, I’ll throw you the rope, and you can pull me out.”

  I hung from the lip of the doorway, then Guccio took my hands and lowered me farther. We released our grips, and I dropped to the far wall.

  The place was a treasure trove of useful toys. Pressing a button next to each tool on the wall popped it out of its recess. We used the equipment to make ourselves comfortable while waiting for rescue. For example, we took a small ax over to the cafeteria and with a bit of rope acrobatics, I swung over to and broke open a vending machine.