by Mack Maloney
The saucer did, in fact, go very, very fast, but it proved for scary riding whenever it chose to remain inside the Lost Dimension. This place was a complete void: no stars, no planets, no celestial phenomena at all. Just unceasing blackness. With no frame of reference, no feeling of direction or speed or up or down, it was very disorienting to those on board, so much so, it drove two of McLyx's flight crew right over the edge. It happened the fifth time the ship unexpectedly jumped into the Lost Dimension. The pair began vomiting heavily and writhing around on the deck. They recovered temporarily when the ship slipped back to their reality. But when it crossed back over once again, the two crewmen simply went berserk. Alternately retching and convulsing, they screamed so loud and so long, they had to be stunned by McLyx's sergeant at arms, using a low-power setting on his ray gun. The two crewmen finally fell comatose, stiff and bleeding from the ears. Both had swallowed their tongues.
This incident had a very demoralizing effect on the remaining flight crew, most of them feeling poorly in the first place with the smell and the slime on the deck. Whenever the ship would break back into the real dimension, crew members could be seen praying that it would remain there.
But then they would start to freak out whenever it was knocked back into the absolute darkness again.
And the troubles didn't end there.
Even worse, the circle ship was leaving a wake behind it, an unintentional contrail in space. It was made up of unidentifiable substrata debris, things more bizarre than quarks and quacks. Whatever it was, the trail was wide, white, almost phosphorescent — and visible from thousands of miles away. This was not something you wanted while trying to complete a very top secret, unauthorized mission.
The trail of debris at its brightest appeared just as the saucer was approaching the edge of the Star Trench. The plan had been to simply fly over the confluence of Empire ships, as at the time the saucer was thought to be invisible, at least to the standard Empire scanners. Plus this route was the most direct to their eventual target of Doomsday 212 farther up the Two Arm.
But just as the long, dual line of Empire warships appeared on the McLyx's long-range viz screen, the damn saucer popped back into reality and soared nearly the entire length of the Star Trench, exposing itself for all to see. McLyx watched in horror as his defensive weapons suite lit up with thousands of indications of both SG and SF ships turning on their X beams in anticipation of taking a shot at what, from their point of view, actually was an unidentified flying object. He knew speed alone could not save them, as some X beams could travel faster than a Starcrasher in Su-pertime. It was only by dumb luck that just as they'd made this great display in front of billions of witnesses on both sides, the balky saucer popped back into the Lost Dimension, disappearing in an instant.
That's when McLyx just put his head in his hands and moaned, "I should have known this was a bad idea."
Things were just as troubling down at the bottom of the saucer, the area that served as its bomb bay.
Located almost dead center on the underside of the bizarre craft, it was a large, boxy space enveloped in a triple force field. This was necessary, considering what was being carried down there.
It was a flying bomb. Twenty-five feet long, black, teardrop-shaped, it had four winglike fins on its back. Its warhead contained more than five tons of XWMD, the mega-toxin developed by the same beings who designed the saucer. The weapon was actually a gigantic spray bomb designed to ride through the high atmosphere, dispensing its poisons. It was so hazardous, three level-10 force fields were needed to prevent it from leaking.
The plan? To soak the planet of Doomsday 212 with the XWMD, effectively killing everything and everyone on it. Collateral damage? There would much of it. For as the polluted planet orbited its sun, it would leave a trail of the mega-toxin in its wake, and that would serve to eventually spread the alien poison over a large part of the heavily populated mid-Two Arm. Thousands of light-years of space would be uninhabitable for millions of years. This was how the SSG chose to send a message to anyone who would try to oppose them in their nascent, if less-than-secret, bid to take over the Empire. With this bomb, the course of the Milky Way would be changed forever.
But again, things were getting strange down in the bomb bay, too. Two crewmen were designated as the bomb security team. Their job was to watch over the big weapon and make sure that the three-layered force field's integrity stayed at 100 percent at all times. Should even one of the fields break down, it could spell disaster for the crew and the mission.
The two crewmen were stationed on a balcony twenty-five feet above the bomb bay, which looked down on the weapon itself. An opaque ion-lead shield had been placed in a hover over the bomb, this to help insure the top layer of the force field. In order to look at the bomb, then, the men had to move this shield out of the way, which they were under orders to do every five minutes. From their perspective, once the shield was moved, it was like looking down into a pool of slightly agitated water. While a single force field tended to distort all the light waves around it, giving whatever was being held in place a sort of shimmering look, three force fields stacked together gave the impression that the object they locked in appeared to be under water.
Or at least that's how it was supposed to look. Trouble was, sometimes when the crewmen looked down at their charge, they saw something other than the big black spray bomb. And what they saw instead made little sense.
One time they moved the shield, they saw not what looked like a pool of clear water but rather a pool of bilge. Another time they saw water but with human remains floating in it. Most disturbing, though, was when they moved the shield and saw not the spray bomb but a black-and-white image of twenty smaller explosive bombs, stacked in two racks. Below them was another colorless image, this of an ancient bombed-out city. Cement buildings in flames. Blocks upon blocks of devastation. Huge bomb craters. Bodies.
On seeing these things, the two crewmen, both astounded and frightened, would immediately close the shield, convinced they were losing their minds simultaneously. They would sweat out another five minutes before daring to open the ion door again. When they did, and the waterlike image with the spray bomb below it had returned, they would both breathe a sigh of relief.
"Damn blinks," one of them said, after seeing the hor-rific black-and-white vision. "They're going to drive me crazy before this is over."
"Where the hell are we?" McLyx heard himself bellowing.
It was impossible to tell. The windows in the circular flight deck seemed to be changing perspectives with each passing second. Popping back and forth between dimensions was the cause of the flickering look. This only added to the severe motion sickness that had now affected just about everyone on the bridge.
But the constant interdimensional shifting also made navigation nearly impossible. After the fiasco over the Star Trench, the saucer had apparently lost its way entirely. Worse, it was refusing to stay in the real dimension long enough for the navigators to get any true bearings. More than once, McLyx felt as if they were simply tumbling out of control.
The saucer finally shifted back the real world and held itself there. The navigation team went to work quickly, trying to get them a good spot before they were popped back into the black void of the Lost Dimension. It took more than a minute, but finally, the navigators got a fix on their position. They were about 500 light-years beyond the Star Trench and 350 beyond what was considered the SF's rear areas. This meant they were only about 200 light-years away from their target, Doomsday 212.
This report brought McLyx his first relief from gloom since they'd left Warehouse 066. He was even starting to fit into the commander's seat.
But then the string-comm panels came alive. Suddenly a stream of messages were flowing into the saucer. Messages that only McLyx, as commander of the mission, could reply to. But this made no sense. Not even the top men in the SSG knew this mission was happening. Its dump-off time had been kept a secret, even from them. And cert
ainly no one in the Solar Guards High Command knew they were out here.
So who was calling them? And why?
McLyx slipped out of his seat, nearly fell climbing down from his commander's perch, and then almost slipped a third time making his way over to the communications panel. The comm officers looked worried, distraught even. They'd heard the messages through their comm helmets, and there was no doubt they'd unnerved them. Both men had turned very pale.
McLyx finally arrived and took command of the message flows. All he heard was static at first. Static, and a strange pulsating type of music. But then, slowly, gradually, the messages started coming through. They were orders for them to turn back.
But McLyx knew right away something was wrong with this. First of all, there was no one who had the authority to call them back. But even more frightening, the voice on the other end ordering him to return to base was that of a child.
McLyx was convinced at that point he, too, had gone round the bend. The voices in his ear — and there were suddenly more than one — were saying the right words, even using standard SSG codes, but they were children, first ordering him, then pleading, then begging him to turn around and return to Saturn.
McLyx ripped off his comm helmet and hurled it across the room. He looked at the two communications officers. Now they were almost in tears.
He said to them, "This is not a mission we can turn back from. We have to keep going. We have see it through. There's no other choice."
An instant later, they popped back into the void of the Lost Dimension. A chorus of moans came up from those on the flight deck. More vomiting could be heard. The lights within dimmed even further. Outside the windows there were no stars, no planets, nothing. Just blackness.
That's when the scanning officers called out. Something else was going wrong.
McLyx slid his way over to Scan Control. This station had a large screen with a multitude of dials, half of which had been skewed by all the interdimensional jumping. But the screen itself was working, and the image it was beginning to show was both troubling and fantastic.
"Someone is following us," one of the scanning officers told McLyx.
McLyx studied the big screen. One moment it was empty. The next, five objects had suddenly popped onto it. They were moving as fast as the saucer. In fact, they were coming up alongside it.
This was impossible, though. Wasn't it?
McLyx was simply stunned. Other officers were now looking at the long-range scan screen as well. Panic started to seep in. McLyx knew it was crazy, but he had to keep order on his bridge, to keep events from going out of control.
"It's just a blink!" he yelled to the flight crew. "Get back to your stations. These things will go away!"
But they didn't go away.
Just a few seconds later, the five strange craft had pulled even with the saucer. They could be seen very clearly out the starboard side windows. The craft were bulky, gray green, big enough to carry a few people, with a huge metal spinning thing on their noses. The words "U.S. Navy" were emblazoned on their fuselages, along with a big white and a striped red and blue emblem. People in goggles were looking back at them.
"They are not real!" McLyx screamed again. "It's the blinks! Don't look at them!"
But suddenly the comm set in the control deck came to life again. And this time, everyone could hear it. "This is Right 19," an eerie voice said. "We are lost. Can you give us a compass check?"
Still shaken by the previous haunting message, the comm officers lording over the communications gear were too stunned to reply. And what would they say if they could?
"This is Flight 19… we are not sure of our position… can you help us?"
McLyx just stared at the comm officers, and the men stared back, unable to move.
"I'm sure I'm over the Keys," the voice said. "I just don't know how far down…"
With that, the five airplanes banked left and were suddenly gone.
No sooner had they disappeared when another object was detected coming up on the other side of the saucer.
It was another kind of spacecraft, but just as strange as the five objects that had just ridden alongside them.
This vessel was big and white with a black bottom and a high tail. On the nose was the word Columbia, but all other writing on the side of the vessel looked to be burned away. This craft had a slightly delta shape, not quite a wedge, but possibly, to some eyes, the beginnings of that omnipresent Empire design could be seen here. Three huge engine noz-zles were sticking out of its aft section, but no flames or exhaust could be seen coming out of them. The craft was keeping pace with the saucer, but it did not seem to be moving under its own power.
McLyx was staring at this ghost machine now, unable to take his eyes off of it, mesmerized by its sudden fantastic presence. What was it? What was it doing here, in the Lost Dimension with them? How could it be moving so fast without the power to do so?
He ordered it scanned front to back, top to bottom. The scans came back almost instantly. There were no life-forms aboard the vessel. Yet, no sooner had he heard this report when he saw a person at the craft's small window looking over at him. This person waved to him; McLyx had to stop himself from waving back. Then, suddenly, flames started pouring out of the vessel's left wing. They quickly spread up and over its body and soon engulfed the tail. Just seconds later, the entire craft was close to being totally involved in flames.
Yet throughout all this, the man in the cabin continued waving to him.
"It's just another blink!" McLyx roared again. "Stop looking at it! That's an order!"
No sooner were these words out of his mouth when the flames engulfed the craft completely. But it did not explode nor did it melt away. It just simply banked smoothly to the right and soon disappeared into the void. A moment later, the saucer dumped back into real time.
McLyx closed his eyes and tried his best to keep his emotions under control. It was hard to do. He had a distinct feeling that he was slipping… just slipping away to a place that was not good, that had no light, that actually might be very, very hot, yet dark at the same time. He tried to shake away these thoughts, tried to shake away everything but what he had to concentrate on regarding the mission at hand.
When he opened his eyes again, he realized everyone on the bridge was looking at him.
He was about to scream at them to get back to their stations, when the scan officer called out another alarm.
Something else was chasing them now. An Empire vessel. But going very, very fast.
McLyx ordered its image up on the screen. Again, he was astounded by what he saw.
It was indeed an Empire ship. Just a bit smaller than an Empire spaceflghter, it was wedge-shaped. But it had a very high tail, a sort of blunted nose, and open-ended nacelles on either side of the cockpit. It looked very, very old.
"It's another blink!" McLyx roared again.
But this time, he really wasn't so sure.
It was the KosmoVox, of course, hot on the trail of the flying saucer, intent on stopping it before it was able to launch its XWMD weapon at Doomsday 212.
Hunter was still at the controls of the ancient spacecraft, had the throttle buried, and was moving faster than he thought possible in an Empire ship.
Following the saucer had been easy — almost too easy. It was leaving a contrail thousands of miles long and nearly as wide and had flown a straight line from Saturn to the Two Arm. True, it was blinking in and out, appearing then disappearing at infrequent intervals. But it was doing this so rapidly, it actually made it even easier for Hunter to keep up with it.
It was a chase then. A fantastic, exciting, exhilarating chase. And Hunter was nearly delirious from the pursuit.
Absolutely nothing had gone wrong since the Kosmo's dramatic departure from Saturn. Just how the SSG-controlled saucer got beyond the Pluto Cloud, they didn't know. But he simply blew past every SG frontier post he came to, following the saucer's phosphorescent contrail in the sky. There
were some SG pursuits, especially once they'd busted out beyond the Solar System and headed in the direction of the Star Trench. Hundreds of regular SG ships were moving back and forth through this corridor. Some were spacefighters, others Starcrashers, still others just hump ships with weapons on them. It didn't make any difference. Anyone who tried to chase the KosmoVox simply got lost in their cosmic dust.
And strangely, Hunter knew — he just knew—what was happening aboard the saucer. He knew about the stink and the slime and the strange calls from ghostly children. He knew about the spray bomb and the popping back and forth between dimensions. He even knew it was the infamous Finn-Cool McLyx at the helm.
He knew these things as clearly as if he was riding aboard the saucer himself.
But he had no idea how he knew these things.
And that was starting to bother him.
Annie was at his side during the entire adventure, of course, kneeling next to him, looking gorgeous, her arm hugging his leg. Zoloff was hanging over his shoulder the whole way, too. They had rooted him on continuously during the chase, praising his flying skills and being very vocal in how heroic he was, taking on the SSG practically single-handedly.
For many reasons, though, it shouldn't have been this easy. The KosmoVox was so old it didn't have any of the ul-trasophisticated long-range scanning equipment that more contemporary Empire ships employed. Nor did it have anything more than a simple navigation suite. But they always knew where they were going and what was around them simply because Zoloff had this fantastic ability to just look out one of the tiny ship's small windows and tell them exactly where they were at any given moment.
And at mis moment they were just minutes from Doomsday 212, and they had apparently caught up with the saucer just in time. The SSG ship was flying very irregularly, almost convulsing its way through space. Hunter had the KosmoVox flying at nearly full speed, its velocity indicator had long ago disappeared into the red. And even though it seemed like the saucer would have the ability to go much, much faster, Hunter had had no problems at all keeping up with it.
