Stranded (A stand-alone SF thriller) (The Prometheus Project Book 3)

by Richards, Douglas E

  Imagine what this means. It has a range of almost twenty miles. So if an entire army has you surrounded, you can send them all floating at the touch of a button. Presto, they are no longer affected by gravity. Or better yet, increase their gravity so they can’t lift themselves from the ground, or lift a finger to control a tank, plane, or submarine.

  Yes, it’s true that gravity is the most ridiculously weak force-that-isn’t-a-force in the universe. But still, when you have total control of it, well … let’s just say that capturing Prometheus—and keeping it forever—won’t even be a challenge for me. And that will be just the beginning. I have big plans, Ben. Big plans. I’m going to succeed where Tezoc failed.

  Unfortunately for you, this means that no rescue party will be coming for you and your team. Ever. But look on the bright side, Ben, at least you don’t need to waste time worrying about what I’m doing on Earth. After all, you’re a citizen of Isis now. So enjoy your stay. It’s going to be a very, very long one.

  Nathaniel B Smith

  CHAPTER 13

  Cut Off

  There was a stunned silence after Mr. Resnick finished reading the letter, but it didn’t last long.

  “Are you kidding me!” screamed Eric Morris. “This guy’s a raving psychopath!” He turned to Miguel and Cam who were each lying across several seats in the back of the tram. “Isn’t it security’s job to make sure a psychopath doesn’t join the team? You people tested me enough.”

  “Pointing fingers at each other isn’t going to help us,” said Mr. Resnick. “We need to decide what we’re going to do from here.”

  “Yeah, who died and made you king!” snapped Donna Morgan.

  “I’m in charge of this expedition,” said Mr. Resnick.

  “Well maybe you shouldn’t be,” said Eric. “You’re the one who sent Nathaniel over the edge, after all. If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “We need to pull together,” said Mr. Resnick. “This is no time for petty arguments.”

  “Oh really,” said Donna. “When is a good time, Ben?” she demanded. “And what does it matter? We don’t have a chance anyway. Your brilliant wife led us all to believe the wildlife was harmless.” She waved at the formidable beasts surrounding them, dying for the chance to rip them to shreds. “Do they look harmless? We won’t last a week.”

  “Please,” said Mr. Resnick. “Not in front of the kids.”

  “They’re not stupid,” said Eric. “They can see the situation we’re in.”

  “Would you two shut up!” thundered Mrs. Resnick.

  “All of you stop it!” shouted Ryan. He had never been so bold as to shout at a group of adults like this before, but his anger was so intense he didn’t even question it. “If we can’t work together as a team we won’t last a day.”

  Regan was shocked by her brother’s outburst. “What are you doing?” she snapped at him.

  “I have an idea,” said Eric through clenched teeth. “How about staying out of adult business! No kid’s going to tell me what to do.”

  Regan frowned. She wasn’t surprised by Eric’s reaction at all—Ryan had brought it on himself. Even so, as one of only two kids on the team, she felt the need to defend him. “If it wasn’t for a kid,” she pointed out in as calm a voice as she could manage, “we’d be dead already. Remember who started the torches going.”

  “Great,” said Eric. “Congratulations. We’ll give you a medal if we survive ‘till morning. Instead of a quick death, now we get a slow one. Thanks for nothing.”

  “Enough!” screamed Mr. Resnick at the top of his lungs. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to stop arguing. We can’t live the rest of our lives in this tram. So we’re going to relight the torches and set up another—far bigger—protected area using the portable force-field generator. Once we’ve set up camp, we’ll gather as much flammable material as we possibly can. If we ever want to expand our territory, we’ll need plenty of fires.”

  Bob, Donna, and Eric glared at him bitterly for several long seconds.

  “Okay,” said Donna finally, a scowl on her face. “It’s as good a plan as any. I’ll follow you … for now. But just because you and your wife outrank us back at Prometheus—back on Earth—doesn’t mean anything here. What are you going to do if I don’t carry out an order—fire me?” She laughed bitterly.

  It was clear from the hard expressions on the faces of both Bob and Eric and their grim nods that they agreed with her completely.

  “If fire is our best source of protection,” said Eric, “the two flares we have left won’t help us for long. Please tell me someone thought to pack some matches.”

  Mr. Resnick nodded. He rooted through an overstuffed backpack and pulled out a container with fifteen small lighters inside. “These are better than matches,” he said. “Waterproof, and easier to use.”

  “Well aren’t you the Boy Scout,” said Donna, grabbing a blue one.

  Mr. Resnick passed the rest of the lighters around until everyone had one, including his two kids. There were six remaining, which he stowed carefully away.

  “Use these only when you have to,” said Mr. Resnick. “Light torches with other torches. I didn’t bring any extra lighter fluid. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

  With the lighters distributed, the group prepared to carry out Ben Resnick’s plan. They located the case with the portable force-field generator inside. They gathered their torches and prepared to relight them so they could fight their way through the vicious horde beyond the tram.

  Only the horde was gone. All of the predators had left. Every last one.

  They hadn’t bolted off, as if they had spotted a more dangerous predator. They had just calmly left the area, until none of them remained.

  Ben Resnick scratched his head. “Where do you think they went, Amanda?” he asked.

  His wife shrugged. “I’m not sure. But the way they all dispersed is very unusual behavior.”

  Not that she was complaining. With the circle of claws, fangs and deadly horns gone, she finally felt as though the drilling on her raw nerves had stopped.

  The portable shield was based on secrets Mr. Resnick’s team had learned from studying alien technology. It was far, far weaker than the force-fields that surrounded Prometheus and the zoo planet portals. Any animal with the strength of an Earth bear could break through with enough effort, so Mr. Resnick had made sure it was also electrified. After getting a significant shock no animal would push on it long enough to break through, and would quickly learn not to touch it at all.

  The generator formed an energy bubble with a diameter of about thirty yards and was very energy efficient. It could operate for up to twenty hours on a single charge and it could recharge using solar energy. If the sun wasn’t out, a hand crank on the generator’s side could be turned manually for about an hour to recharge it.

  Mr. Resnick chose a flat, open area about forty yards from the tram and activated the force-field. A greenish flicker gave its location away so those inside wouldn’t accidentally touch it and shock themselves. Along with the water and most of the supplies, they carefully carried Miguel and then Cam inside the large, protective dome of energy and laid them on the ground near one of its edges. Only two hours had passed since the group had arrived on Isis, but so much had happened, so much had changed, that it seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Ryan, give me a hand,” said Mr. Resnick. “We need to bring the last inflatable habitat over from the tram.”

  Even though half the food and water had disappeared with the second tram, there were two fewer bodies to feed and most members of the troop had packed far more food than they needed for just a weekend. If they pooled their provisions and exercised careful rationing they could make them last three or four days. The biologists who had been on the planet before knew of a freshwater stream five or six miles away. They would need to relocate there before they ran out of water. Then, if they wanted to survive, they would have to learn to hunt with p
rimitive weapons; an exercise that was bound to prove more than just a little challenging given that the closest most of them had ever come to hunting was picking out steaks in a grocery store.

  Ryan walked to the edge of the barrier with his father, who deactivated it with a small silver remote, about the size of a cell phone. They stepped outside its protective confines, each carrying a burning torch, and Mr. Resnick reactivated the shield behind them.

  Not a single native animal had returned since they had left ten or fifteen minutes earlier, but Mr. Resnick wasn’t about to take any chances.

  As they neared the tram a strange odor hit their nostrils. They sniffed and glanced at each other questioningly.

  A jagged, three foot tear opened in the ground between them!

  They both darted to opposite sides of the opening as the tear grew. Ryan didn’t feel an earthquake but the growing split in the earth behaved as if it were being caused by one.

  “Ryan, move farther away!” shouted his father as he took his own advice and backpedaled in the direction from which he had come. “Hurry!”

  Ryan quickly backed away from the lengthening trench that separated him from his father just as bright orange lava spewed from below the ground and began pouring into the new channel.

  Another tear opened suddenly near Ryan’s feet and he retreated even farther, dropping his torch. He was now twenty yards away from his father. He scanned the area and was able to find a lava-free path that would allow him to return—provided no further breaches occurred.

  He was moving toward a crossing point when his father shouted, “Ryan, the mountain! Look up!”

  Ryan did so and his heart jumped to his throat. A massive river of molten lava was racing down the mountain as if a dam had burst.

  And it was headed directly toward him!

  It was as if Ryan was in the middle of a dried up river bed that was about to become filled once again after a flash flood. Instantly. Filled with a liquid fire that would kill him on contact.

  He bolted toward the edge of the multiple rips in the ground and kept sprinting away even after passing this boundary, farther and farther away from their makeshift camp. The river of lava surged over the ground he had just occupied. Additional fissures opened up and spat lava, and Ryan was forced to keep running at full speed to be sure he was completely in the clear. It was almost as if the fissures were following him. The ground didn’t settle for several hundred yards. When it did, Ryan continued to race away from the area for several minutes, just to be on the safe side.

  “Ryan,” broadcast his sister frantically five minutes later. “Ryan. Are you okay?”

  He was now much too far away for her to see or hear, but well within the fifteen-mile range of their telepathy.

  “I’m okay,” answered Ryan finally, although he knew this was a very temporary condition.

  Ryan could sense the relief in his sister’s mind.

  “What about you?” asked Ryan.

  “It was close, but we got away. We had to move the camp in a hurry, but only to a spot thirty yards from where we were. We were on the very edge of the flow. Unfortunately, it kept getting wider and wider in the direction you went.”

  “And Mom and Dad?”

  “Both okay. Dad almost got splattered by lava. But he was carrying the force-field generator to the new location and it saved him. The generator is melted in a few places but working fine. Cam and Miguel made it too. While Dad was running with the generator, the rest of us carried them to the new camp.”

  “Can you see the lava river from where you are?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there any break in it? Anyplace I could cross and get back to camp?”

  There was a long pause, and Ryan knew he had his answer.

  “I’m really sorry, Ryan,” she replied at last. “But there isn’t. The lava starts at the very top of the mountain and flows down to the cliffs and the sea below.”

  “So you’re saying I’m totally cut off from the rest of you. By myself. Without any food, force-fields, or weapons. On a planet whose predators have developed a taste for humans. Is that about right?”

  Regan didn’t answer, but then again, she didn’t have to.

  He had summed up his hopeless situation perfectly.

  CHAPTER 14

  Death Awaits

  There was a long silence, and then Regan’s telepathic voice returned.

  “Mom and Dad were freaking out about you. So I told them you were okay. That you had managed to outrun or dodge all the cracks in the ground and all the lava flying around.”

  “Then you must have told them about our telepathy.”

  “No. I can’t see why keeping this secret matters anymore, but I didn’t. I told them I spotted you far off in the distance before you disappeared behind a hill.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  “Of course. Why would I lie about that?” She grinned. “I mean, if you forget for a moment that I was actually lying.” She became serious once again. “They’re working on some way to rescue you. But they haven’t had any luck so far.”

  “Because there isn’t a way.”

  Ryan couldn’t believe it would end like this. All alone on a savage planet trillions of miles from home. “How could this happen?” he broadcast angrily. “I’ve studied volcanoes. Lava doesn’t act like this. It’s usually thick and moves slowly enough for you to jog out of the way. And the volcano didn’t erupt and shoot gas and lava into the air like it’s supposed to. I mean, we had absolutely no warning. So how do you get a river of fresh lava flowing down the mountain without an eruption?”

  “Hold on for a minute,” she replied. “I’ll ask Dad.”

  A few minutes later she returned. “Dad pretty much said what you just did. He has no clue how the lava acted this way, and how it could be so thin and travel so fast. But he reminded me that a volcano on Isis doesn’t have to work the exact same way as one on Earth. And lava doesn’t either. He said that even without an eruption, we should have had some warning from smoke and burning plants. But, apparently, there were no plants of any kind in its path.”

  “Just my luck,” broadcast Ryan bitterly. He sighed. “Look … Regan … I have to go. I’m not sure how many hours I have until it gets dark, but I have to come up with some sort of plan long before then. I’ll contact you with an update later.”

  “Good luck, Ryan,” she replied. And with that their connection ended.

  Ryan looked around. He was still on a barren section of the planet. So far he hadn’t seen any native wildlife but this wouldn’t last forever. They had seen their share of big game in areas like this on their way out from the portal. He guessed that even the planet’s most fearsome carnivores didn’t want any part of the raging river of scorching lava and were keeping as far away from it as possible.

  But Ryan knew he wouldn’t stay lucky forever. Soon enough he would encounter a predator and it would attack. It would have speed, strength and other formidable physical weapons that evolution had perfected over millions of years to allow it to survive in a hostile environment. And he would have his fists, a lighter, and a red pocketknife that contained two blades, a screwdriver, and a bottle-opener. The bad news was that he had no hope of survival. The good news was that if he needed to open any bottles, he was in great shape.

  He had to find protection and he had to find shelter. A cave might be ideal, but he doubted he would be lucky enough to find one—at least not right away.

  He needed a torch. The tiny flame from a lighter wouldn’t scare off a rabbit. More than that, he needed a roaring fire to protect him and to keep him warm during the long night.

  And that meant going back into another forested section of the planet for wood and other kindling. Into the habitat of the gray-furred, silver-eyed pack animals they had just finished battling. Ryan didn’t want to go anywhere near where they might be, but he knew he didn’t have a choice.

  The nearest section of accessible rainforest was the area t
hey had traveled through when they first exited the Isis shield. He began jogging in that direction. He needed to have his fire raging and a large pile of kindling gathered by dusk.

  As Ryan ran, it occurred to him that his best bet was to spend the night with his back against the force-shield. This way no animals could approach him from behind. If he built a semicircle of fire in front of him, he might be protected. He could use his pocketknife during the night to fashion a spear or two from broken branches.

  He jogged about two miles to the very edge of the forest, for once glad of all the running he had been forced to do in Phys Ed. He skirted the tree line, not wanting to enter until he had found a stick nearby to use as a torch. He soon found one and with the help of his lighter had it flaming only a few minutes later. The alien wood made excellent tinder. With his torch blazing he quickly made his way to the shield, half a mile deeper into the forest.

  Fortunately, Ryan didn’t encounter any dangerous wildlife. He spent the next hour gathering wood into a massive pile against the shield, along with stones to use as weapons. He then arranged the kindling in a semi-circle about ten yards out from him and set it blazing. This accomplished, he sat with his back to the shield and began whittling two spears from straight, solid branches.

  Twenty minutes later the gray-furred pack animals appeared.

  Just as before they emerged from nowhere and began their telltale clicking noises, far louder and more penetrating than such noises had a right to be and completely unnerving. Ryan counted fourteen of them. They were respecting the fire, but they held their ground.

  Rage swelled up in him. “Leave me alone!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. He hurled rocks into the pack as hard as he could, but even if he made contact, it didn’t help. The animals would disperse for a few minutes and then return, as if nothing had happened.