by Al Macy
Drenast hit the object dead center with his beam. He flew past it, and I followed. I grabbed the object and tucked it under my arm like a football.
We flew out of the enemy craft and burst into Raptor’s cargo hold. Falbex had moved our ship even closer to the enemy craft. Acceleration-induced gravity snapped on, and we floated to the deck as the enemy craft slid from view.
I dropped my prize on the deck then flopped down on my back. Gradually, my heart stopped trying to escape my chest.
Several zealos trained their weapons on our booty. Workers brought over two heavy-duty chests, and our spoils were locked safely away.
* * *
I sat on the side of my bed in Raptor’s sick bay. The dim lighting, quiet atmosphere, and faint forest scent had a calming influence. The dinobird veterinarian, who’d come along just for us humans, seemed to enjoy fixing me up.
I had a chipped bone in my elbow. He called it osteo-kon-something-or-other. Had he gone through the medical data from the monolith device? I also had some nerve damage. No problem. I was good as new after placing my arm in a machine and getting an injection. The vet chose to let my bruised foot heal on its own.
Guccio came out of the encounter unscathed. He’d gone up to the bridge and was probably talking strategy with the captain.
Drenast, however, had a serious injury to one wing. I learned that with surgery, he’d make a full recovery. He spoke quietly with Cree. I stopped by his bed to thank him again, but he was sedated and pretty out of it.
Jobex came in and drooped over to me. He apologized for deserting us.
“No problem, buddy.” I clapped him on the shoulder and he flinched away. “I understand the innate timidness of your species. I know you tried. I’m glad you got back okay.”
Since the ship was accelerating at about half a g, I could walk easily on all the decks. With acceleration-induced gravity, the central passageway was even more like an elevator shaft, but the engineers had installed rungs on the walls so Gordon and I could go from one level to the next.
Jobex accompanied me on my way to the bridge.
One floor up from the sick bay was the recreation center. I passed it, then stopped when I heard the voice of Alex Trebek. What? I stepped back down and into the hall. I beckoned, and Jobex came with me.
A game of Jeopardy! was indeed taking place in a corner. The celano in front of the contestants sounded like Alex Trebek.
“… Misten, back to you.”
“Literary quote category for the four hundred box, thank you, Alex.”
“This gumshoe tells Brigid, ‘When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.’ Misten.”
“Who is Sam Spade?”
My jaw dropped. I grabbed Jobex’s wing and pulled him to the side. “Okay, what’s going on?” I pointed toward the contestants. “What … how can they do that? You said you had no knowledge of my world until I arrived.”
Jobex’s crest popped up and down, and he pulled away from me. “No. That is true. When you came back, you brought the memory device loaded with information of your world—”
I put my hands on my hips. “Yeah, but that was just eight days ago.”
He ruffled and then smoothed his feathers. “We possess a device; you might call it an assimilation accelerator. It greatly accelerates our ability to take in information and works together with chips in our brains. By the way, we had put one in your brain during your first trip, but it failed to interface properly.”
I crossed my arms and stared at the far wall. “Okay. Too bad it didn’t work. Let’s go. Sorry I grabbed you.”
On the bridge, Falbex and Marbecka perched near Guccio, who munched, as always, on an unlit cigar. Right behind him was a larger version of those cylinders that extended from floor to ceiling.
Falbex directed me to my crash couch, in front of a cylinder of my own.
He spoke to everyone. “I now wish to rapidly bring you all up to today’s date. During the attack, soon after Jake and his warrior arrived, we transmitted all the information from their memory device back to Earth, where it was loaded into our network.”
Falbex pointed to another zealo. “Captain Raybol here rapidly loaded Raptor with scientists and engineers and flew here at maximum speed to rescue us. I wish to commend him. I have taken command due to my seniority.”
Marbecka took over. “Much of the information from Jake’s world has now been assimilated. An example is that we know much more about your physiology now. As a result, engineers and veterinarians have created disportion units for your pleasure of traveling.” She explained how they worked.
Falbex ruffled his feathers. “Let us now brainstorm. First, the enemy ship.” He gestured to the holoviewer. “Destroy it, cripple it further, or keep an eye on it?”
I raised my hand. “How much can we learn from what we brought back?”
“Very much,” Marbecka said. “There is a high level of redundancy in the firmware of those devices. An example: All of the information in the briefcase was duplicated in the dodecahedron.”
Guccio pulled the cigar from his lips. “Vaporize the ship. It’s not worth the risk.”
Falbex manipulated some controls, and a pair of beams flashed from our ship to the enemy craft. The beams shut off, and nothing happened. Five seconds passed, and then the craft puffed into an orange ball and collapsed in on itself. Hooray for our team.
“Time for the next question.” Marbecka stretched out a wing. “What the hell kind of ship was this? How did the colonists get so advanced?”
Guccio held his cigar out. “Hold on. If this is a drone, where is the controller? Wouldn’t you have detected another ship within a close enough distance to control it?” He looked from Falbex to Marbecka. “Right. So, perhaps this ship is autonomous.”
I scratched my chin. “Have you considered the possibility that the colonists have nothing to do with this?” I thought back to the information from our ETs. “Could a totally different civilization be trying to provoke a war between—”
The alarm blasted through the bridge. All the dinobirds fluttered up then back down onto their perches. An announcement in their language followed.
The hologram in the center of the bridge zoomed and shifted, and another spacecraft, this one shaped like an egg, appeared near us, approaching fast. It would reach us in minutes.
My body was whipped back into the cylinder, and Guccio was flung back into his. The disportion units. I was spun back this way and that like a squirrel in the middle of the road deciding which way to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I staggered out of my cylinder with the worst hangover of my life. The others stepped from their units. Guccio held one hand over his mouth and the other over his eyes.
“Welcome back, Jake.” Marbecka didn’t look too good, either. “How did you enjoy the disportion unit?”
I rubbed my eyes. “How fast did we go?”
“For a while, we sustained a thirteen-g acceleration. That egg-shaped ship couldn’t keep up.”
Something about the shape of that ship nagged at me. Egg shaped. What was it? Something vitally important I was missing. Aargh! I frowned at the deck and shook my head.
“We are free now,” Falbex announced. “Jake, your headshake signals disagreement?”
“No, no. Not at all.”
He continued. “Of what were we speaking when the egg ship interrupted us? Jake?”
“Right.” I sat on my crash couch. “Two things. First, maybe there is a different civilization that is trying to provoke a war between you and the colonists.”
“And second?”
“What if that ship wasn’t a drone or a robot controlled by living creatures? What if we are dealing with a machine intelligence here? Not an organic species.”
Marbecka’s crest popped. “You mean like in the Terminator movies.”
“Yes, yes, exactly. And maybe those machines are behind the universe collision.” I explained how our ETs had warn
ed of an intentional sabotage of the universes.
Marbecka snapped her beak, equivalent to us snapping our fingers. “The fifth universe. X-1.”
“Hold on. What is X-1?” Guccio still had his hand over his eyes.
“X-1 is a universe we know almost nothing about. But if the machines came from X-1 …” She turned around on her perch. “Yes, that would explain a lot. The colonists couldn’t do this. So maybe the machines are intentionally sabotaging the universes, though I can’t imagine why. And that egg ship—really more like a sphere—”
I jumped up and yelled, “Of course!” The tickle in my brain burst into conscious thought, fully formed. “Egg. Sphere! I should go back and get Cronkite’s sphere.”
The dinobirds fluttered off their perches and moved away from me.
Guccio shook his head. “Interesting idea, Jake, but it’s not designed for warfare.”
“No, but it’s so advanced, we can figure out a way to use it.” When we’d captured Cronkite, his intergalactic spacecraft became our intergalactic spacecraft. The dinobirds’ tech was impressive, but Cronkite’s sphere was in another league altogether.
“An advanced tractor,” Guccio said, “is still just a tractor.”
I turned to Marbecka and described the sphere. Feeling like a kid asking his mommy for permission, I said, “Can I go get it and bring it here?”
She bobbed her head. “Shit, yes. Now that we have a paratransitter in both universes, the process is much easier to set up. As long as the sphere will fit—”
“When can you send me back?”
“Immediately.”
I looked at Guccio. “Gordon?”
“No, I’m good here.”
“You want me to bring you anything?”
“Krispy Kreme.”
“Got it.”
* * *
The whine decreased in frequency, the colors shifted to normal, and I found myself in the paratransitter on Mount Rainier. Jake the universe commuter.
I stepped out, blinked, and shook hands with Elon. We’d sent back a data straw explaining things, and I had followed twenty minutes later.
“Welcome, Jake. Did it feel any different this time?” Elon raised his eyebrows.
I shook my head. “Not really. There’s a weird moment in the middle where my mind … goes away. Like falling asleep.”
“But no faster?”
“No.” I frowned. “Why do you care if it’s faster?”
“Shoot. I thought it would be quicker this time.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I made changes to speed it up. Not sure why they didn’t work. Also, I think I can find a way to do an accurate paratransit with a machine in only one universe.”
“I’m trusting you not to screw around with it too much. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Elon clapped me on the shoulder. “No worries. We have a jet standing by.”
I called Charli, who was in DC, and filled her in on my plans.
“Oh, Jake, I don’t like this,” she said. “I’ve been talking with Mary. We talked about how you sometimes can’t resist being a hero.”
“I know. I’ll be careful. Promise.” She was right—I did sometimes get caught up in the heat of the moment. I’d just have to watch myself—keep Charli and Sophia in my thoughts. That would work, right? “This is just something I have to do, sweetheart. I’ll see you soon.”
The helicopter flew me down the mountain to the parking lot of the Paradise Lounge. I had a lot on my mind, but I was still able to appreciate the deep blue sky, sparkling snow, and amazing view. Might I never see a view like this again? Die in outer space in another universe fighting robots? I shook my head.
I emerged from the Sikorsky all-weather copter to the roar of a Harrier vertical takeoff two-seater. I’d been in one of those back in 2011 when chasing those satellite-destroying terrorists. The technicians suited me up and loaded me into the jet, and we were off. The pilot took us straight up, then transitioned to level flight. Sure, I’d traveled through space at a gazillion miles per hour, but this was still a thrill.
The pilot’s voice came through my headphones. “Mr. Corby, I have the president on the line. I’m patching you in.”
I filled him in on the current situation, describing my plan to use Cronkite’s sphere to defeat the alien robots who were preventing the dinobirds from saving the multiverse. Yeah, it sounded that wacky, but this was serious business.
Next, I spoke with the Carter twins, Martin and Alex, telling them I was on my way to check out the sphere and get a crash course in its operation.
The Harrier jet landed at Rinstat Air Force Base, the DC facility dedicated to research on Cronkite’s sphere. Taxiing toward the hangar, I caught sight of Charli, Sophia, and Marie standing beside their escort. Sophia was jumping up and down, waving an American flag.
The shutdown took a while, but a ground crew soon rolled the all-metal airstairs over. I thanked the pilot and headed to my family. Sophia ran out and jumped into my arms.
I teetered as if I would fall and let out a mock groan. “Oh, you’re getting so big!”
“Oh, Daddy!” She buried her head in my neck, her long hair tickling me.
“Where’s Boonie?”
She leaned her head back. “They wouldn’t let us bring him here. He’s in the car.”
“Poor Boonie! But that’s probably best. It would be too loud for him here.” Those four words, “He’s in the car,” summed up the difference between a dog’s life in nature versus in the modern world. Good thing we didn’t remember our time in dino-land.
I kissed Charli and got a soul-satisfying hug in return. It made me wish we were going home to stay. I put Sophia down and started to hug Marie. She stopped me by holding up a finger but let me kiss her on the forehead. Old timers from Maine weren’t big on hugging. Yes, I’d gotten better at toning down my displays of affection for Marie, but my emotional attachment to her remained.
“Daddy, look!” Sophia held out a piece of paper.
I knelt down and examined it. She’d drawn the three of us and Boonie on a picnic. A celano flew across the sky. “This is so good, Sophia. Did Mommy help you draw it?”
She shook her head. “No, I did it all by myself.”
“I’m so proud of you. Wait, why are you crying, sweetheart?”
Her chin quivered and the tears slid down her cheeks. “I want you to come home. And stay home.”
Picking her up again, I stood with her head pressed into my neck. “I will soon, I promise. I know it’s hard, but I hope you can be a big girl and be patient. And we’ll all be together tonight.” I squeezed her tight.
Some of my own tears tried to push their way out. C’mon Corby. Man up! Charli squeezed my hand. I wanted the same thing Sophia did.
We spent some time catching up, and then Marie took Sophia for a trip to the Smithsonian. Charli and I went into the hangar. The building had been constructed specifically for Cronkite’s sphere. A huge hatch sat open in the center of the building’s roof.
The floor was white and shiny, almost mirrorlike. And there it was, the main attraction, hovering inches above the floor, as stable as if nestled in granite. About ten meters across, it resembled a gray golf ball but had hundreds of protrusions arranged like tiny blocks in a crowded city. I’d seen an IBM Selectric typeball in a museum once. It looked a lot like that. I recognized that same ozone-chlorine smell that surrounded the celano ships.
Alex waved to me from a computer console next to the spacecraft. A hatch irised open on the sphere, and Martin popped out, his hair even more unruly than before. At an early age, he and his twin had insisted on color-coding their hair so people could tell them apart. Alex-Aqua and Martin-Magenta. They’d grown since we last saw them.
They were the smartest child prodigies the world had ever seen. At age four, Martin was solving differential equations and Alex could read the New York Times. Charli and I strode over, our footsteps echoing off the walls.
I gave them both bro-hugs
. “So you guys are eighteen now.”
Alex nodded. “And we’re much more serious.”
“Not!” they said together.
“Surprising you have any time for your job, what with working on your comedy routines.”
Charli hugged them both. “You guys have girlfriends now?”
They both gave thumbs-up signs.
I clutched my heart and dropped my jaw. “Wha? You found girls—sorry, women—who put up with you?”
Alex laughed. “We were going to give up—”
“But then we thought about you and Charli.”
“Gotcha.” I gave a mock-serious nod. “If Charli could find—ow!”
After punching me in the shoulder, she shook her head. “Enough banter. Get to work.”
I tilted my head toward Charli. “She’s such a b—”
“Watch it, buster.” She had a smile on her face.
“—Bully! What did you think I was going to say?” I walked around the craft. Despite having piloted it, I’d never gotten a close look at it from the outside. I put my ear up near the sphere and frowned. “What happened to that noise?”
“The woo-woo flying saucer sound?” Martin smiled.
“Yeah. Didn’t it—”
“Like this?”
The sound started. Exactly like the sounds spaceships made in old sci-fi movies.
“Yeah, that’s it. Is it just a sound effect?”
“Exactly. Cronkite watched our sci-fi movies.”
I looked at Martin and then at the sphere. “Are you—?”
“I’m controlling it with my thoughts,” Martin nodded. “Watch this.”
The sphere popped up to the ceiling, made a fast circuit around the hangar, and returned to its original position.
I shook my head. I’d controlled it with my thoughts when Cronkite had taken me for a joyride, but I’d figured you had to be inside.
“Any new capabilities?”
Martin nodded. “It has some interesting tricks up its sleeve. We don’t have to wait until tomorrow, you know.”
