Against Time

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Doc had always been in his own personal heaven working on higher levels of physics and subspace and warp space technologies. And now it looked like he found a woman that might be able to keep up with him.

  “Did you find her?” Doc asked, picking up the map on the table.

  “Thanks to a wonderful person by the name of Raina in transportation, I found her.”

  Both Doc and Kalinda applauded.

  “Doc told me what you are thinking of trying to do,” Kalinda said, staring at the picture on the table. “She’s beautiful.”

  “But she’s not going to remember you,” Doc said, sitting at the big table and motioning for Kalinda to do the same.

  She went over and sat beside Doc, leaving the chair across from them open.

  Fisher doubted Doc noticed, but it was clear that Kalinda wanted her and Doc to be a couple. And as far as Fisher was concerned, that was fantastic.

  “Nope, she won’t remember me,” Fisher said as he served them salads in bowls with the dressing tossed in. “And she has to want to come back to the ship on her own free will. That’s the only rule.”

  “Ouch,” Doc said

  Kalinda just shook her head. “So you can’t just bring her up and then convince her to stay after she sees all this.”

  “Nope,” Fisher said, his stomach twisting so much he wasn’t sure he could eat. “I got to let her know I’m a space alien and that she should zip away with me to the stars.”

  Kalinda laughed softly, but Fisher could see in her eyes that she understood his problem.

  “What can we do to help?” Doc asked.

  Fisher just shook his head. “Not a thing I can think of. Just keep learning and I’ll let you know when I head for the planet and when I get back. Think you can feed yourself while I’m gone?”

  Kalinda just patted Doc’s hand on the table and he looked at her with a fond smile and a slight puppy-dog stare.

  “I’ll show him how to use The R-12’s mess and boards for snacks,” Kalinda said to Fisher. Then she looked into Doc’s eyes with a smile. “But trust me, he won’t get anything like this wonderful salad.”

  “Thank you,” Fisher said, nodding to Kalinda.

  She smiled back and Fisher liked her even more.

  And from there they talked about engines and mathematics and everything but the task that faced Fisher.

  How was he going to convince a very smart woman who was alone in the mountains after seeing a lot of death that he wasn’t from her world, that humans existed beyond her planet, and that she should leave the planet with him.

  Yeah, that was going to be easy.

  And if he did anything slightly wrong, he would lose any chance of being with Callie forever.

  Scared didn’t begin to describe how he felt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AFTER BREAKFAST, Callie headed out to search for firewood and other items on her list.

  Near the downstairs kitchen entrance that she had taken the bodies out of was a double door that led into an area of the basement. It took her a while sorting through all the keys before she found the right one and got the door open.

  Inside was a room the size of a double car garage and on both sides stacked as high as she could reach was freshly cut firewood, all up off the ground on wooden pallets.

  “Score,” she said, laughing and clapping her hands together. The lodge had already brought in their wood for the winter, so she was ready to go.

  In the back of the garage area was another locked door that didn’t take as long to get open because she now had the right key ring, more than likely from the person behind the desk upstairs, or one of the cleaning workers she had moved out.

  She opened the door and was stunned. There had to be at least four rifles in there with ammunition under them and two shotguns. There were also knives and other things needed to dress out an animal.

  Not once in her life had she fired a gun and didn’t much care for them. But standing there, staring at those rifles, she suddenly realized that maybe, just maybe, she should have a way of defending herself.

  If not from wild animals, from other humans.

  The thought made her shudder, but she still picked up the smallest rifle. The boxes of shells under it said “22 caliber” it, so she took a number of boxes of shells and the gun, locked the closet back up, then locked the wood doors, and went back upstairs.

  She stored the rifle under the front desk and put the shells beside it.

  At some point in the near future she would practice with it a little bit, see if she could even load it.

  But not today.

  She went back outside, fired up the van that she had used the day before to transport supplies, and headed up the road toward the big parking lot again. She kept the windows rolled up, but still a couple times along the way she had to cover her nose from the smell coming from the bodies in the forest service building, the two still in the lot, and those down in the entrance to the cave.

  She went all the way to the top of the lot to where the other building sat. It looked like it had been a large cabin at one point and had been converted to offices in the front.

  She decided to go through the cars first. She found more snacks, mostly bagged chips and candy bars. She also found two flashlights and a couple more coats.

  She looked up at the building, almost afraid to go up and try the door, then decided she might as well.

  She climbed the ten steps sniffing with each step. So far the air was clear.

  She looked through the windows along the porch into the building and could see no one dead in there. Just a few desks and a small kitchen area off to the back.

  Finally, taking a deep breath and holding it, she tried to open the front door.

  It was locked.

  Could she get so lucky as to have no one dead in this building?

  She spent a good ten minutes going through keys before she found the right one.

  Again taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

  No smell. Just a smell of closed up and musty.

  So the cars out front were for the workers down in the other building.

  She explored the four offices on the main floor, finding two more rifles, a couple flashlights, and some containers of paraffin for the oil lamps that were scattered around the room.

  All of the lamps also seemed full, so they would help with light if she couldn’t find more fuel down in the lodge.

  In the kitchen there were more supplies, but nothing fresh. All canned and packaged food, which she was happy to see.

  Upstairs there were two dorm rooms, one had women’s clothes in a suitcase. But the woman had been very tall and very large and Callie just left them since she was convinced none of it would fit her at all.

  More blankets, more bedding, nothing else.

  She took what she needed out to the van, closed and locked the building back up, and then went down to where the cars were parked.

  Moving quickly to avoid as much of the smell as she could, she checked the glove boxes for flashlights, finding two more.

  By ten in the morning she was back at the lodge and had a load of laundry going in one of the big machines.

  As she was taking a long drink of water from a bottle of water, it suddenly dawned on her that she was forgetting a couple of very major areas of survival that she needed to deal with first.

  Water and sanitation.

  With enough water she could make toilets work. And take baths. But did she have enough water?

  And could she get it when the power failed?

  The idea of not having enough water suddenly had her feeling very panicked.

  She grabbed two candy bars and another bottle of water. Munching on a Snicker’s Bar, she went in search of how the lodge supplied its water.

  She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that before now.

  What else was she forgetting?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  FISHER SPENT the next few hours downloadi
ng and studying the area around where Callie was held up, including pictures of the lodge.

  Then he went back to talk with Raina in transportation. She was very glad to see him and got him back to her station at once.

  “You about ready to go?” she asked.

  “Getting there,” he said.

  Today Raina had a maroon scarf around her neck that both accented her short brown hair and her dark dress. And like the first day, she was wearing sandals.

  “What I need is information about how the transport to the planet surface is going to work.”

  She pointed toward the back of the room. “Back there we have a transport room that will transport you to any spot on the planet’s surface simply by asking. No waiting.”

  He nodded.

  She held up a small button about the size of the end of his little finger. “We plant this under your skin, normally on the inside of an upper arm where it won’t get accidently triggered. You press it in a certain set manner and it will automatically transport you back to the ship and the transport room.”

  “And if I can get her to agree to come up with me?” Fisher asked.

  “You simply say that you have two to transport and hit the button and we bring her along. Just as it is done on the panels around the ship.”

  “Great,” Fisher said.

  At that moment he noticed that Raina’s eyes got slightly bigger and he turned around in time to see Benson come up behind him.

  Fisher and Raina both stood.

  “Chairman Benson,” Raina said, nodding slightly.

  Fisher glanced at her. He had no idea why she called him Chairman. Clearly he had been so focused on getting Callie on board, he hadn’t bothered to learn much about this big ship. And suddenly this little voice was warning him that maybe he needed to spend some time and do just that.

  “Just wanted to check and see how it’s going with your search for the woman you were talking with,” Benson said, smiling at Fisher. “Now that I have a little time to breathe again.”

  “Raina is helping me a great deal,” Fisher said. “She found Dr. Callie Sheridan and now I’m just trying to figure out a way to approach Callie on the surface without her chasing me away like I was a nut case.”

  Benson nodded. “The planets at this level are very suspicious and fearful of possible alien attacks. In a different universe, I suppose it would be justified. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Actually,” Fisher said, “Raina is doing a great job on this problem. But I was wondering if I could have a little of your time to get a few questions answered in general.”

  Benson laughed. “I figured you might have a few thousand questions. And your friend Doc has taken to engineering as if he has worked there his entire life. So I have time now. Let’s go to my office.”

  “Wonderful,” Fisher said. He turned to Raina. “I’ll be back. Thanks again.”

  “You are more than welcome,” Raina said, smiling.

  Benson then said, “Two to my office.”

  A moment later Fisher stood in a huge office with an entire wall that looked like it was open out to space. Below the blue and green and whites of the planet spun by slowly.

  “Never get tired of that view,” Benson said, indicating a large chair for Fisher to sit in across a wide wood-looking desk.

  “Can I ask why she called you Chairman Benson?” Fisher asked as he sat down, turned slightly so he wasn’t distracted from the view.

  Benson nodded. “In the Alliance we formed in our sector, we don’t have a military structure. We run every ship as a corporation, a business venture. So what would be the Captain is the Chairman.”

  “Since you plan on being here for a year, how many people live on board?”

  “Just under two thousand,” Benson said and Fisher was stunned. “A lot of families and we are doing a lot of research and just getting used to this big new ship over the year.”

  “Wow,” Fisher said.

  Benson shrugged. “Space has no limits and power is unlimited as well. We are only limited by our imaginations. Which brings me to your partner, Doc. He’s amazing.”

  Fisher laughed. “In more ways than one.”

  “Just from questions he’s asking in engineering, he might help all of us advance in speeds of our ships. Glad you both are interested in staying on board for a while.”

  “Thanks for having us,” Fisher said.

  He went on to ask a dozen more questions about the ship, including the one about how everyone spoke the same language.

  “Transport,” Benson said. “The language is just given to the person being transported.”

  “That’s why we could understand you and think we were speaking our own language?”

  Benson nodded. “Exactly. Since all humans on all planets seem to have a basic pattern that their civilizations develop, the language aspect became pretty simple.”

  Something about all civilizations developing along similar paths bothered Fisher, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. So he asked the next logical question he had.

  “Has anyone ever gone looking for the Seeders?”

  Benson laughed. “Just about every day from every planet out there that has figured out space travel and found out what happened in this galaxy.”

  “And no trace?”

  “Not one item left behind by the Seeders. Nothing. They seeded the galaxy with humans and plants and animal life that took over on each Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks zone of each sun and then seemingly vanished.”

  Benson tapped what to Fisher looked like a form of computer panel on his desk, then scribbled something on a note pad that everyone on the ship seemed to have and leave around like paper.

  Benson then handed the pad to Fisher.

  “Doctor Jenny Sins, the top scientist in the department focused on the Seeders search. Go talk with her. Tell her I sent you.”

  “You have an entire department on the ship for this?”

  “Every ship does,” Benson said. “The question you asked is that important to all of us. We all know how the universe started. That’s just science. None of us have a clue how we got here.

  Or for that matter, why?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  FISHER WAS STUNNED when he entered the Seeder Research area of Benson’s big ship. There had to be fifty people working in the large room at different stations. He had no idea what they might be doing.

  An elderly man with white hair and a formally white lab coat that seemed smeared with some sort of strawberry jam sat at the first desk closest to the entrance. He glanced up and then smiled with a perfect set of teeth. The smile made his face turn into a mass of loose flesh and wrinkles. “You’re one of the explorers from this sector, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Doctor Vardis Fisher,” Fisher said, extending his hand. “But everyone just calls me Fisher.”

  The older man took his hand and shook it, but before he could say anything a woman’s voice behind Fisher said, “Well, Doctor Fisher, The Chairman warned me you would be coming.”

  Fisher turned around to face one of the most beautiful women he could have ever imagined wearing a white lab coat. And over the years he had imagined some pretty amazing women in white lab coats. Never met one, but imagined many.

  She looked more like a model that should be posing half-nude in magazines.

  “I’m Doctor Jenny Sins,” she said, extending her hand and smiling. The smile reached her blue eyes and made her seem radiant. She had long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and seemed to be about Fisher’s height.

  And she was Fisher’s age as far as he could tell.

  He took her hand and as he said he was pleased to meet her he noticed her wedding ring.

  She held his hand for a few seconds too long while she stared into his eyes, then nodded and let go and turned away. “Let me show you what we do here.”

  Fisher had no idea what that was about.

  He followed her and her flowing brown hair and whit
e lab coat as she introduced him to three others in the lab. All seemed very happy to meet him for some reason.

  Finally they ended up in a large open office built into one wall of the large room. It was clearly her office and from it she could pretty much see the entire room.

  She went around and sat behind a large desk that seemed to have grown out of the floor. She indicated Fisher should take the chair across the desk from her, which he gladly did.

  “Well, Doctor Fisher, ask me anything and I’ll see what I can tell you.”

  “It’s just Fisher.”

  She smiled again. “Jenny.”

  He took a second, then decided which question he wanted to ask first.

  “So is it clear where the Seeders started and where they stopped in the Galaxy?”

  She nodded and with a few quick taps on a control panel on her desk, an image of the Milky Way Galaxy appeared on the wall to the right.

  “They started in this area,” she said, and on the map an arrow appeared pointing at some stars on the outer edge of one of the spiral arms of the galaxy.

  “They went around the galaxy clockwise, working inward and then outward, and ended in this area.”

  Again on the image of the galaxy another arrow appeared near the edge of the galaxy.

  It was amazing and almost more than his mind could handle. She was talking about an entire galaxy like it was a neighborhood. Billions of stars and more distance than he could almost imagine.

  He forced himself to not think of the size they were dealing with and pull his mind back and pretend the galaxy was actually only like a round city.

  “Looks like they came into the galaxy,” Fisher said, continuing to stare at the image, “did their work, and then left.”

  She nodded. “Sure seems that way.”

  “How far into the core of the galaxy did they push?”

  “Only as far in as human populations could stand the radiation levels,” she said. “But very few of those civilizations in close have survived for very long. Just too much going on in closer to the galaxy core that causes planet-wide destruction.”