by Jack Castle
Zimmerman cued his radio. “Base Commander, this is General Zimmerman.”
“What the hell are you guys doing down there? That was a 12.7 on the Richter scale!”
“Shut up and listen to me. I’m ordering a full evacuation of all personnel. Evacuate! Repeat, all personnel are to evacuate Europa Moon Base Alpha immediately.”
Alarms and red strobe lights were immediately activated. Although there were nearly a thousand colonists topside, they were all trained in evacuation procedures. The majority of them could be in orbit before the elevator reached the surface.
Leo looked back at the tunnel entrance where water was already starting to pool. “We’re not going to make it!”
“The hell we aren’t!” Tae said. He removed his trusty tool bag from his belt and knelt down next to the elevator’s control panel. “Leo, help me get this panel off.”
A survival knife’s blade suddenly appeared behind the panel, courtesy of Stein. Great leverage was applied, and the panel clanged to the floor. “Done,” Stein said. He re-sheathed his knife in one practiced move.
Everyone, including Mac, was in shock at the display. Say what you wanted about Stein’s attitude, but you sure as hell wanted him around in a crisis, Mac thought. Maybe she should apologize for shouting at him; after all, he had likely saved her life. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for the commando to make.
Still kneeling by the elevator, Tae generated a few sparks as he manipulated the wires that were spilling out of the panel. “There we go.”
They all looked up at the elevator display. It indicated that the car had stopped its ascent and was coming back down.
“Good job, son,” Zimmerman said.
“Yeah,” Mac added, “I think you just earned your pay for the year.”
Seconds later, they heard a loud crash followed by sounds of water roaring towards them from the far end of the tunnel. The subsequent ding of the elevator was the best sound Mac had ever heard.
Brett led the others into the elevator. “Move it people,” Zimmerman ordered. As the commanding officer, he was the last one in to safety.
There was a tidal wave of dark water rushing toward the elevator, and Leo began pressing the elevator buttons repeatedly until he saw Brett calmly looking at him.
The big boy from Wisconsin was the proverbial rock in the storm. “You know, you’ve only got to press it once, right?” Brett said in his thick Midwestern accent.
The elevator closed just as the massive wave pounded into the doors.
#
After a seemingly endless ride filled with unsettling creaking sounds, the elevator arrived topside, and the doors parted. “You have now arrived at the surface level,” the elevator’s automated voice announced.
The Alpha Base OPS center initially appeared to be abandoned, but Mac spotted one of the paramedics pinned beneath debris from the partially collapsed ceiling. “Over here!” she shouted, as she knelt by the injured paramedic. Leo was the first to join her. “No, not you, Leo. You and Tae go prep the ship for take-off.”
“Right,” Leo said. He grabbed an inbound Tae, and they sprinted for the hangar bay.
Mac tried to pull the paramedic out from under the debris, but he screamed when she pulled on him. The general and Brett soon arrived, and each took a side of the largest piece of rubble that pinned the paramedic. Muscles straining, they slowly began to lift it off of him.
“Almost there!” Mac said. She glimpsed a cantaloupe-sized rock bounce off Brett’s shoulder. The commando didn’t even flinch.
Mac was concentrating so hard on freeing the paramedic that she didn’t see the remainder of the ceiling give way. “Look out!” she heard as Stein dove on her and expertly moved them both out of harm’s way. It was the second time he had saved her life, the third if she counted his help with the elevator.
The paramedic wasn’t so lucky. Only a bloody, pulpy mess remained beneath the new pile of rubble. Fortunately, both the general and Brett had dove out of the way just in time to escape injury.
“Thanks,” Mac said while the big commando helped her to her feet. “I’m sorry about what I said before. I know you saved my life.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “C’mon, it’s time to get out of here.”
#
In the hangar bay, Leo ran alongside Tae and dodged another fissure that opened up before them. He pulled out his radio and contacted the Explorer II. “Jeannie, this is Leo. Begin take-off procedure.”
Leo, a fan of I Dream of Jeannie, had programmed the computer to speak with Barbara Eden’s voice, and her voice now responded, “Yes, master. Shuttle will be ready to launch in fifteen minutes.”
Tae shook his head; yep, Leo agreed, fifteen minutes was way too long.
“Jeannie, ignore all safety checks and launch procedure protocol. Just open the rear payload bay doors and start the engines.”
“That is highly irregular, master,” the computer responded.
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
“Yes, master.”
#
Seventy kilometers below, the Europa pyramid shot beams of light energy into the heavens. Once in orbit, the energy beams tore into the fabric of space and began to form a wormhole — a wormhole that led, not to another part of the galaxy, but to another dimension.
#
Still inside the crumbling Alpha Base, Mac risked a look over her shoulder and saw the ground collapsing behind her, almost as though the opening fissure were chasing her.
“Don’t look! Just keep running!” Brett said. He and Stein on either side of her, grabbing her arms to help her increase her speed. They practically carried her the rest of the way to the ship. The general, despite his age, was only a step behind.
The four of them dove through the hatch just as the Explorer II began to move.
“All secure,” Tae said into the intercom and slammed the hatch closed behind them.
Mac tried to catch her breath. “What about the Europa colonists?”
“The colonists evacuated the moment the earthquakes started,” the general replied, putting down his radio. “Their shuttles are breaching orbit even as we speak.”
A heavy bump launched Mac off the floor, and debris could be heard impacting the ceiling. The ship was moving, but they were still in the hangar bay. “You three strap yourselves in; Tae, you’re with me,” Mac ordered before she bolted for the cockpit.
When she arrived on the flight deck, Leo was maneuvering the ship around another fissure, and the nosecone was just starting to lift off the ground.
As she scanned the runway ahead of them, Mac dropped into her seat and buckled her safety harness. She could see the landmass dropping out beneath them. “Better punch it, Leo.”
“You got it. Jeannie, you heard the lady. Full burn.” Leo and Mac were pressed back in their seats as the Explorer II’s engines doubled in output and lifted the ship skyward. Leo whooped and hollered himself hoarse as the ship barely managed to slip away before the planet began to implode.
Once they were clear, Mac finally released the helm. “Let’s see if we can hook up with the other shuttles and limp back to Jupiter station.” She turned to the right of her console and pressed the communication button. “Tae, how’s our fuel?”
He appeared on the flight deck behind her chair. “We’re carrying a full load.”
“Commander,” Leo said cheerfully, “I’ve got the other shuttles on radar. They’re quite a ways ahead of us, but I think we can catch ’em.”
“Steady as she goes, Lieutenant.”
“Aye-aye, Commander.” Leo’s jubilee abruptly cut short as his gaze snagged on something on his console. “Hey, Tae, you want to take a look at this?”
Tae leaned over and quickly scanned Leo’s console. With a furrowed brow, he confirmed the readings on the engineering co
nsole behind him.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Mac asked.
Tae checked the readings once more. “We’re firing all engines at full burn, but we’re actually moving backwards.”
A sick sensation settled in the pit of Mac’s stomach. “Tae, if it’s still attached, bring up the aft view camera.”
Tae punched a few buttons and an image of the Explorer II’s tail appeared on her screen. Behind it, Mac saw the spiraling halo of atomic gas particles that had been incubated by the temple’s cataclysmic reorganization of Europa’s molecular photons. It was a damn wormhole…
Ten seconds later, the Explorer II vanished from the known universe into the crushing forces of the swirling vortex.
Chapter 5
The Specimen
Human Specimen 5924 awakened in a puddle of vibrant amber liquid. As he hacked and coughed like a man who had nearly drowned, he slowly realized that he had no recollection of who he was or how he had come to be there. His spew matched the amber fluid that he lay in as it flowed into what appeared to be little drain holes in the floor.
Trembling, he listened. Aside from a slight mechanical humming that matched the faint vibration in the floor, his breathing was the only sound that broke the silence. The taste of the acrid amber liquid lingered in his mouth, but there was another taste, too: the metallic taste of fear.
He glimpsed an empty cylindrical chamber beside him, which also contained remnants of the mysterious fluid. Realizing that his bare hands were wet with the stuff, he slowly sat up and wiped them on the sides of the brown leather bomber jacket he wore.
As he looked down at the jacket, he saw that he also wore some type of uniform resembling a flight suit. “CPT H. REED” was stencilled on the left breast pocket. The same name appeared on dog tags that hung around his neck. Alarmingly, the name meant nothing to the man. But at least I know my name — my last name anyway, he thought. An inventory of his pockets further revealed a standard issue .45 automatic pistol and two spare clips.
Wincing in pain, he pulled himself to all fours and looked around the room, which contained several rows of identical cylinders, all filled with the same amber liquid. He turned his throbbing head around and saw a man, wearing clothes similar to his, slumped over what appeared to be the controls of the empty cylinder. Exposed wiring stuck out of the mechanism, and the man’s hands were scorched black, suggesting that he had been electrocuted.
The cylinder beside it contained another man. A hardened form of the amber liquid encased him and rendered his features nearly unidentifiable, but the captain could just make out the prisoner’s mouth: it was frozen open in an eternal scream. The captain looked back at the empty cylinder and faced the terrifying realization that he had been its occupant.
Frantically, he tore around the room, searching for a way out. He exited through a hatch and stumbled into a hallway that had curved walls and smooth, but uneven, rubber floors. His legs pumped furiously as he sprinted away from his holding chamber. I have to get out of here, his mind screamed. He took off, unsure where his legs were taking him. Sometimes, his feet carried him off the ground, and he felt as though he could almost fly.
It has to be some kind of crazy dream. It has to be.
But then the dream became a nightmare. Captain Reed turned a corner and saw a green haze emanating from a room ahead. What he saw next stopped his frantic flight dead in its tracks. Shadows of small, thin bodies with oversized heads danced on the wall.
Gathering his courage and staying in the shadows, he slid against the wall and inched forward. Instinctively, he reached for his .45. He flicked the safety off and pumped a round into the chamber in quick, practiced movements. The feel of the steel in his sweating hand was comforting.
He moved closer to the threshold to take a peek inside the hazy green room. Just as he was about to peer inside, he felt long fingers, ice-cold to the touch, slither over the back of his neck like a squid’s tentacles encircling its prey.
Without thought, he spun on his heel and raised his weapon. In the brief moment before he fired, he glimpsed a gray-skinned creature with enormous black eyes.
The gun roared. The sound echoed off the walls then died.
In the darkened corridor, the muzzle flash was so brilliant that for an instant he was blinded. When his vision finally returned, he saw that blue blooded brains now stained the curved wall. At such close range, the .45 bullet had passed right between the creature’s eyes and blown out the back of its head. Before he could investigate the motionless creature further, he once again became aware of movement in the shadows. They heard the shot, and now they’re coming for me. There was only one thing he could do.
He ran.
He ran through the seemingly endless maze of dark, tubular corridors, desperately searching for an exit, until his lungs finally demanded rest. Gulping air, he found a small niche near a circular chamber and crawled inside. Here he could hide, catch his breath, and contemplate his next move.
Looking down, he noticed that the weapon, as well as his hands, face and arms, were splattered with flecks of bluish blood and bits of grayish brain matter. A feeling of revulsion washed over him as he furiously wiped the strange, sticky substance off his face and forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
As he continued to gasp for breath, he expertly hit the pistol’s magazine release with the thumb of his right hand and checked the spent clip. Only one round short. Fumbling for the spares in his pocket with his left hand, he inserted a fresh magazine and racked the slide. He was aware of the clacking noise it made more than ever before.
Weapon loaded, he peeked around the corner of his hiding place at the hallways that led from the chamber. Which one? Which one? He couldn’t tell which — if any — of these hallways he had been down before. One of these must lead out of this maze, he thought. He heard a growing rustling sound and felt them drawing nearer. It’s now or never. He boldly dashed into the chamber and turned down the first hallway on his right. He ran down the hallway until it dead-ended in a cavernous room that was about four times the size of any aircraft hangar back home.
Looking around, he realized that the cone-shaped room had to be some kind of storage facility, for it contained old vehicles, like a blue Ford truck and a ‘kidney-crusher’ motorcycle. In addition, five planes hung near the ceiling, like model planes on a mobile. The captain was surprised that he could identify the planes as TBM Avengers.
With these new sights, the captain’s memory began coming back in tsunami-like waves. An image of himself in the cockpit of a different kind of plane flashed across his mind. He wasn’t sure what kind of plane it was, but he knew it was flying over the Atlantic. Then he saw the faces of his crew members — all young, all smiles, all nameless to him. They were doing something important … searching for a patrol that had gotten lost. That’s what it was: a training mission that had gone wrong. It was up to him and his crew to find fourteen souls lost in the Atlantic — fourteen souls that had been flying in TBM Avengers.
The five Avengers had to be the lost torpedo bombers he and his crew had been looking for. Well, he had found them, by God. Only in doing so, he had become lost himself. Hell, he still didn’t even know his own first name.
As he scanned the Avenger planes and the Ford truck for any signs of life, he saw the crown jewel of the whole damn collection and immediately recognized it: it was his plane, a Martin Mariner PBY flying boat, more affectionately known by her crew as the Hail Mary; all 124 feet of gorgeous wingspan. Normally, it was downed airmen floating in the Atlantic who swore that the big rescue plane was the most beautiful sight to behold, but to Captain Reed, she was now the Holy Grail. More importantly, she had every conceivable kind of rescue apparatus, from self-inflating rafts to a waterproof transmitter that could transmit a distress call for hours. I have to get up there somehow.
Just as he was contemplating climbing the room’s honeycomb
walls, the captain took one step into the open, and his legs were suddenly pulled out from underneath him. It was as though he were caught in a bamboo-tree snare trap, but instead of falling to the floor, he was immediately catapulted toward the ceiling at an alarming rate. Before the captain had control of his senses, he slammed face-first into the underbelly of the Hail Mary. He was stuck there, suspended at least forty feet in the air.
It took a moment to get used to being weightless, but the captain eventually used his hands to move from a gun turret to a steel strut and then to the side hatch. He clung to each handhold as if his life depended on it. While he figured he wasn’t in any danger of falling, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up to his plane again on the first try.
He gained access to the cockpit through the side hatch and immediately made his way to the radio. He flicked a switch, and to his surprise, the radio still had a full charge. He picked up the mic lying on his seat and pressed it firmly to his throat. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the Hail Mary.”
Captain Reed repeated the transmission once more and then froze. Looking out the cockpit window, he saw that there was no ceiling to the cavernous storage chamber, only stars — stars that streaked by at impossible speeds. Until this point, despite all that he had seen, he hadn’t really believed any of it was true. But it was true. He, his crew, and the crewmen of the missing torpedo bombers had been abducted by aliens that traveled among the stars.
The captain realized that he was still holding the microphone, and he dropped it in disgust. Still in a daze, he spotted what appeared to be a flight logbook floating in the lighter gravity just inches above the flight console. Its worn leather cover was also marked with the name “Captain Reed.”
His hand lunged at the suspended logbook and grabbed it. He took comfort in the book, part of a deeply ingrained practiced procedure, and suspected that it might help him cement his grip on reality. Gathering his thoughts, his right hand absentmindedly pulled a pencil from his left breast pocket. He began to write in the small logbook — slowly at first, and then rapidly — documenting the strange events of the last hour of his life — the only hour he could clearly remember.
