by James Harris
“The crew was safely stowed in crypt-orbs. There were five orbs per ship. Stell must have them. I’m afraid that he will recruit them to his side after transitioning them.” Grayer’s shoulders sagged noticeably. “I needed them to even the odds.”
Grayer described how, in the beginning, many years before, he had been a military volunteer working with Bohr. He had volunteered for a test and was merged with Kor using the Learning Stall. Unfortunately, the stall was destroyed during the transfer and none of the other crew made it through.
“So the rest of your crew is still trapped aboard your wrecked spaceship?” Joe asked.
“All the recovered pieces from the wreck were buried to avoid discovery. The crew’s crypt-orbs included. No one who saw them would ever guess what the globes were really for. Well, David did, but he kept it a secret all these years.”
“Were they damaged?” Joe asked.
“I’m not sure. They appeared scorched on the surface, but that wouldn’t have fatally damaged them.
Suddenly, he slapped his hand down soundly on the control panel.
“Of course!”
“What?” Hawk asked.
“We can recover the stored crypt-orbs from my old ship and transition them. If we could rescue my crew and use them to fight Stell, we would stand a chance to stop him.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Joe said.
“Can you find them?” Hawk asked.
“I know where they are,” Grayer said as he turned to the control panel. “They’re stored with the wreck in a military storage vault underground. Now, with this ship, with the transition chamber intact, I could restore my crew. My crew! My mission! Boys, we have a chance.”
Just then, they all spotted a small convoy of military vehicles. “I forgot about them,” Grayer said. “I radioed for help after the attack on the helicopter.”
The convoy was a few hundred yards away. The twins looked to their father for a course of action. He shook his head, admonishing himself for his lapse of focus. An immediate decision had to be made. “I’m going to have to launch. Hawk, run back and release the pilot. Carefully jettison him. He’ll be OK.”
“Dad, he’s outside!” Hawk said, two minutes later.
“Good work, Hawk.” With that, Grayer spoke a command to the panel and the silver ship disappeared.
Or so it appeared, right in front of the astonished eyes of the men driving the convoy trucks. One minute a strange craft was in front of them, and the next second they were looking at empty desert.
“There’s an airman down!”
The lead vehicle ground to a halt, and a camouflaged soldier jumped from the truck. He ran over and gestured to the ambulance. With his hands planted firmly on his hips, he looked all around him. There was nothing but the charred remains of a military helicopter in front of him. The sky was a blank, with only twinkling stars interrupting the inky nothingness.
“Someone help me with this man.”
The silver airship that had been no more than yards away from him had simply vanished before his eyes. He had seen his first flying saucer.
CHAPTER19
GROOM LAKE, NEAR MEXICO
Once airborne, the craft streaked through the sky.
“The wreck is hidden only minutes away,” Grayer said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you – how did you escape from Stell?”
The twins began to fidget and look uncomfortable.
Joe ventured in. “I guess it was me at first. They had shot David. I went … well … nuts! I guess I lost it. Some weird feeling came over me. It was as if I knew what to do to protect Hawk and me from danger. It was instinct more than anything. There was this green stuff that acted as a shield for us. Lightning sort of started coming out my fingers, too.”
“The guy they called Cringen shot at us,” Hawk said. “We were scared at first. Then we got really mad. Well, Joe got really mad. Really crazy. He made this weird loud-pitched noise. He projected it.
Well, then I joined Joe and together we pushed them hard, really hard. We thought unpleasant thoughts, like nasty thoughts, and pushed them at Cringen and another guy.”
Joe chuckled. “Then they ran away covering their ears.”
“Thought and sound as weapons,” Grayer said. “It’s a learned skill that takes time to develop. Humans need thousands of years of evolution to learn these skills and genetically pass them on to their offspring. And yet, you have this skill.”
The twins looked at him curiously.
“What you describe is a psychic weapon using the brain and sound modulation. We can harmonically fluctuate the airwaves to create sounds that the human ear cannot detect. Our primal instinct is to flee, but over time we evolved the option of utilizing these harmonics to immobilize or mesmerize attackers. You must have genetically acquired these skills as part of a hybrid mutation of your mother and me.”
“Are you telling us we’re mutants?” Hawk asked.
“No, Hawk. I am telling you that you and Joe have jumped a genetic chasm that has propelled you hundreds of generations ahead of your fellow humans. By pairing our two species, I may have begun a genetic process that has accelerated human evolution as much as half a million years. When you mate …”
“What?” Joe blurted out. “Whoa, Dad. Give me a break. I’m eighteen and normal. I’m not some bug-eyed alien!”
Grayer studied the pair in a new, more scientific light. “You’re right, Joe. You’re not alien; you’re human. You and Hawk don’t look like my Kor body. I was evolved a million years beyond where human bodies are today. However, my ancient ancestors did resemble humans as they look here, today. You may look normal, but you have the evolutionary power and skill of a human being far into Earth’s future.”
“You mean all humans will evolve into a people who have advanced powers?” Hawk asked.
“There’s no doubt that some will,” Grayer said, watching the monitor as they flew along. “There is something strange, though.”
“What’s that?” the twins asked.
“Few of our race ever acquired true psychokinetic power – what you called push: the movement of thought waves through air to make contact with another person. Or, in your case, to actually attack another.”
Grayer turned from the panel and looked at his sons. “You seem to have this power. And, I suspect, other talents we have yet to learn. My special skill is the power of suggestion using sound waves. People cannot resist this power. On my home planet, we called this the power of the Song.
“Our race, all organisms actually, are governed by the Song. That is the rule of music and sound. Why do you think humans love music? It is the rudimentary element of the universe. Sound, frequency, pulse, beat, tone, are all, each and every one, the singular link to all others in the universe. We are not alone. We are linked. We are linked as a planet. We are linked as an interplanetary system. We are linked as a galaxy. We are one as a universe. We are one with God.”
Both boys looked at their father, speechless. “God?” they said. “You’ve never mentioned God before. We always thought you were, you know, sort of non-religious.”
Grayer looked puzzled. “I am. Religions are the creation of Man. They are contrived. We, too, had conjured up organized religion and it morphed into a form of idol worship for many millennia.”
“Then what happened?” Hawk asked.
“We discovered that God, a supreme directive intelligence that mankind will never comprehend, truly does exist, of course,” Grayer said. “So we did not need superstitious beliefs, prophets, or idols to prop up our insecurities any longer.”
“But all religions believe in God, or a god.”
“No. They believe in their god to the exclusion of others. None that I have studied here on Earth truly believe in a nonhuman-like god. Most believe in a Santa-Claus-looking humanoid god. They talk about belief in God and in God’s ‘messengers’ as a road to salvation. Belief in God is the destination discovered. If you truly understand that God fulfills
Man’s ultimate destiny in the chaos of the universe, you are there.
“God, or better put, the mystery of the Universe is an unsolvable puzzle beyond the comprehension of mankind for, perhaps, ever. All religions, all gods, all fear-based hatred is a sad testament to the fragility of Mankind. These are the creation of a timid species – fearful of the dark, of the unknown. We, on Sargon, came to understand that we are not alone in the dark cold universe. That belief was enough to set our egos free. We became fearless of death. We humans exist throughout the universe. My home species of human exists. That is all that matters. If we are, they are, we all are, and God is. How much simpler can it be?”
His sons simply smiled blankly.
“Uh, Dad? Can we get back to the mutant bit?” Hawk asked. “Joe and I don’t know what happened exactly, but calling us alien mutants sort of freaks me.”
“Me, too,” Joe said. “I don’t feel like some weird mutant, Dad.”
“There are certain things my original race can do because of evolution,” Grayer said. “They may seem like magic, but the science is simple. The most common is using the power of the Song to mesmerize people into doing what you wish. It’s rarely against their will. It’s the power of suggestion.”
Grayer looked at the screen. He was working on some program with the computer while he was talking. “What you boys did today was go to a higher plane where you attacked your adversary with the power of your Mind and your Song combined.”
Before the boys could say anything, Grayer said, “We’re almost there.
We’ll talk more about this later. Time to rescue my crew.”
“We have company,” Joe said, pointing to a gleaming spaceship about a mile away on the ground.
Grayer cursed his bad luck. However, he had not picked up any Signatures yet. He masked his aura as best he could and set the craft down outside the range of the other ship.
“Joe. Hawk. Stell has beaten us to the vault. He’s landed at the spot where the remnants of the wreck were buried underground in 1977. This is as close as I can get without alerting them to my presence. You two must go in my place. They won’t sense you. Ordinarily I wouldn’t ask you to risk yourselves, but it’s too important not to try.”
“What do you want us to do?” Joe asked.
“Less than a mile away, exactly where their ship is, there’s a secret government burial site for top-secret objects and such things. Things that the government believes would not be in the best interests of the U.S. population to know about. What’s left of my original spaceship, and my crew, is buried in a fifty-foot corrugated container below ground. The container is rust colored and has the serial number LA2423 on the side. The container is stored on Level 5.”
“2423, Level 5,” Hawk repeated.
“I need you to take the Bot and go quickly to the site. Use the element of surprise and go inside and retrieve the crew crypt-orbs. They’re in a black metal box inside the container. Don’t confront Stell, but you can’t let these guys leave with my crew. I’ll come immediately and lend a hand if you’re in trouble.”
“How will you know?” Hawk asked.
“I’ll know.”
Grayer ushered them to the forward port door. With ghost-like stealth, a Bot appeared behind them. It hovered soundlessly. The door whispered open, letting in the desert air. “Go now. The Bot knows the coordinates.”
“Never even knew we had a Bot,” Hawk said.
“Wonder where it was all this time?” Joe said.
The twins stepped out and away from the craft, but their feet never touched the ground – they were grabbed by a faintly visible, green force field emanating from the Bot. They were whisked off through the desert morning in the Bot’s firm clutches.
As their father had said, it was less than a mile to the entrance of the underground storage site. They flew at about a hundred miles per hour over the flat, desolate desert floor at about ten feet, high enough to clear any brush or cactus. It was exhilarating for the boys, who had a hard time wiping the grins off their faces. For Joe it was exactly the sort of adrenalin rush that he relished. It helped both of them forget the serious situation for a few seconds.
In less than a minute, the Bot slowed to about twenty miles per hour. Joe could see the silver spaceship glittering ahead. Seconds later, the Bot stopped and released them. They dropped to the ground indelicately. The Bot turned back toward their ship and sped away, disappearing from sight in seconds.
“Well, that Bot isn’t much on etiquette, but it’s fast,” Hawk said.
“Sure is. Look, I see an entrance not far from their ship. It’s ahead to the left.”
“I see it, too. It’s almost invisible, even from here.”
“Figures. Dad told us that this is a huge secret underground storage facility for the military. They don’t want accidental visitors.”
The pair trudged forward. Along the way, they observed no one and encountered no resistance. There was no lookout that they could see. Within minutes, they found themselves at the mouth of a cleverly disguised entranceway. It blended in with the desert and would have been impossible to spot from the air.
Stell’s spaceship sat quietly just yards away from the entrance. They cautiously approached the entrance to the facility. For a brief moment they hesitated – they were not armed and had no way of knowing what they might come up against. Emboldened by their newfound powers, however, they continued through the entrance.
The boys stumbled as they entered from light into darkness, losing their footing as the floor sloped down away from them. As their eyes adjusted to the lack of light, they were able to see elevator doors ahead.
“He said Level 5, but I don’t want to take an elevator and walk right into their hands,” Joe said.
“Look around. I don’t see any stairs, Joe. Got a better idea?”
“No,” he said grudgingly, and pushed the elevator button.
At first nothing happened, then the doors suddenly flew open. The boys jumped back, startled. But there was no one there.
Looking left, then right, they entered the elevator. There were half a dozen buttons leading to six stories of underground storage. The doors began to close. Joe stuck his foot out and jammed it open.
“Hawk, we don’t have time to search all six floors,” Joe said.
“Dad said the container was on Level 5. It’s a safe bet that means the number five button on the panel.”
“I guess so,” Joe said.
The door tried to close again but recoiled abruptly after hitting Joe’s foot.
“The agents are probably there already,” Hawk said. “We’re sure to run into them.”
“You’re right.”
“Or worse. They get past us and escape, trapping us down there.”
“Do you think they know where the container is?”
“They knew where the installation was.”
The elevator door made another angry attempt to close. After a moment, Joe said, “I vote we not go down there. I think we should stay here. We surprise them as they leave the elevator.”
“I agree. Dad promised to back us up.”
Hawk was about to turn and leave when an alarm bell started clanging. It came from the elevator. “So much for the element of surprise! We’ve held the elevator too long.”
The boys jumped from the elevator, and the door closed. They heard noises from inside the elevator shaft. It was on its way down, most likely to get Stell and his men.
“Oh, jeez, we’re in trouble. Hawk, we’re unarmed!”
“Hold on, Joe, we can push them. Force them really hard, you know, with our thoughts. Remember how they ran the last time?”
“You’re right. We also have that shield thing we can do. That green force field stuff that you do. You have to admit that was cool. As for the push, I don’t think I can just do it whenever. I was under stress. You and I were really pissed. That’s when it worked.”
Hawk stared at the closed elevator door. “Whatever we decide,
we had better do it soon. These guys will be on their way up at any moment.”
They ran into the desert. The ship was resting majestically in front of them. They looked at each other.
“We could sneak aboard their ship,” Joe said.
“Then what? Wouldn’t that be the same as them capturing us? We would be exactly where they want us. Besides, we have no weapons, really. We can’t point our fingers and play pretend gun.”
“Let’s at least take our own orbs back.”
“What makes you think that our orbs are on board?”
“Hawk, where else would they be? They haven’t had time to do anything with them yet.”
Joe ran up to the spacecraft and stood for a moment looking at the fuselage. He cocked his head slightly to one side, and then placed his hand against the side of the ship. There was a dramatic pause as the craft ran a triangular ID check with all nearby ships and found Joe’s identification on the ship a mile away. The portal opened.
Hawk was amazed that the door had opened. Joe led the way without hesitation.
Hawk followed Joe down the corridors, his eyes darting from side to side. This ship seemed to be identical to theirs in every respect. Before long they found themselves in front of the same wall that their father had shown them. Joe touched the wall. Nothing. With his hand splayed out, he made a wider circular sweeping motion. Suddenly the opening appeared. Joe saw a tray inside and reached for the contents.
“That’s enough, fellas. Step away from there.”
The twins spun around to see a figure standing with a pistol in his hand. A plume of green force field burst from Joe’s hands, splaying outward like a spider’s web and covering Joe and Hawk with a shield. The wavering transparent-green force field was like half a giant egg, covering the boys on their exposed side.
The twins didn’t recognize the man. They showed no fear because they were emboldened by their prior success in the abandoned hangar. The agents had retreated when they encountered their powers.
“Are you one of Stell’s zombies?” Joe asked.
The man bristled. His human Being did not like the insult. His alien Being didn’t fully appreciate the insult.
