Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  Isaac walked over with a transparent cover that he had just finished constructing out of a flexible, glass-like polymer. He put it down on the slab, finding that it fitted over the four trays of food quite snugly, as he had intended. “How about that? Now we have an oven… that should please the traditionalists amongst us!” He smiled over at his wife, noting that her complexion was pale, but no longer had the greenish tinge that they had all developed from eating the Controllers’ food.

  Terry nudged him. “What do you think he’s interested in?” he whispered to Isaac. “You don’t suppose it might be our food?” They glanced surreptitiously over at Latt, who was standing in the doorway to his domain, a position he had occupied since they had started to cook.

  “I doubt it.” Isaac sat down on the bench to conserve his strength. “Anyone who thrives on poison would probably get sick if they ate this.”

  “He doesn’t exactly look like he’s thriving,” Terry continued in the same low tone.

  “I expect the girls back home find him irresistible!” Isaac murmured sarcastically.

  Terry gave him a dirty look. “You’re worse than Ruth!”

  “Why, thank you! I didn’t expect such a high complement from you, you being in a state of extreme malnourishment and all that.”

  Terry groaned, rolled his eyes, and walked away, shaking his head in mock despair.

  “Hey, that smells good!” Ruth exclaimed weakly a few minutes later. “What does a girl have to do to get service in this establishment?”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Terry responded in his most officious voice. “The regular chef is on holiday, the microwave seems to have been stolen, and the waiters are on strike. We are sure that you’ll be impressed, though; we think the food is out-of-this-world!”

  It was Ruth’s turn to groan.

  “And if you can stomach it, here’s the straight answer.” Isaac checked his watch, which had been returned to him, surprisingly, after he had begged for some way to figure out how long a time the food needed to be cooked for. Five fifteen p.m. on Wednesday; three and a half days after our abduction, and as good a time as any to be eating, I suppose. He calculated the amount of time since the slab had heated up. “I reckon the first batch will be ready in about twenty-five minutes, okay?”

  ***

  Ruth sat back eagerly and balanced the foil tray on the folded fabric laid across her knees.

  Both her husband, Isaac and her good friend, Terry watched as she took her first mouthful. She chewed it carefully and swallowed, then waited for the sensation as the food moved down towards her stomach. “It’s good.” She took another bite, then realized they were still watching. “No, really, it’s good! If Isaac ever decides to quit physics, maybe you could set us up in business with our own restaurant, Terry?”

  Terry shook his head again in mock disbelief and sat down to sample his own meal; Isaac picked up his tray and slid to the floor next to his wife. He looked at her with a feeling of relief as she ate enthusiastically.

  ***

  About two hours later, when they had finally finished eating their first decent food in three days, and, incidentally, had devoured everything edible that Latt had provided to them, the three prisoners sat back as comfortably as they could on the low benches and drank up the last few drops of the frozen orange juice that they had made up to round off the meal. They relaxed, savouring the sensation of strength flowing back into their veins.

  Isaac stretched and yawned, leaning further back. He opened his eyes and almost jumped off the bench; Latt was standing right behind him, staring down at him as if he were a down-and-out who had been caught napping in a park after closing time.

  “Sssleep. You musst go to your roomsss and sssleep.” His face was expressionless as usual. “When you wake up you will eat again, then you musst work.”

  They all got up slowly and walked over to their compartments. Isaac started to follow Ruth into her chamber, then he felt Latt’s clammy grip on his shoulder. He turned to protest. He was about to say: Hey, she’s my wife, but the words died on his lips when he saw Latt’s brilliant blue eyes staring at him as if he were a piece of furniture that had decided to move itself from the dining room into the study, and had been caught in the act by the butler.

  Latt pushed him firmly into the right chamber, waited a moment for the doors to slide down and deactivated the mechanisms on all the doors. Then he walked back to the work surface and stared at it with his brilliant blue eyes. He lifted the makeshift cover from the frying-pan-come-oven that Terry and Isaac had devised. He leaned over the table until his face was almost touching the slab. He could tell that it was still warm. His nostrils expanded slightly as he sniffed at the remains of some food that had bubbled over the side of one of the trays.

  He put the cover down and walked back out of the laboratory and into his own domain. This was about the shape of a passenger train carriage – though almost twice the size, but instead of rows of seats, much of the space was filled with stacks of obscure equipment, boxes, sections of what seemed to be prefabricated walls – sections that were clamped onto the structural members spaced regularly down its length – sheets of the flexible, glass-like polymer that had been used to complete the makeshift oven, and yet more boxes. Light was provided by glowing miniature pyramids, positioned every ten feet or so along both sides of the room, attached to curved brackets that extended from the walls about a foot above the floor.

  Latt walked past all of this and stopped at a rack mounted on the curved wall near the far end of the long and narrow room. He pulled down a pile of fluffy grey material and swung part of it behind him. In a moment it became obvious that the material was formed into some kind of coverall; Latt shrugged his shoulders and settled the strange fabric into place; he soon had his legs into the protective suit, and finally picked up a mask which was attached by a thin, flexible tube to a metal sphere about four inches in diameter. He checked the sphere briefly, then placed it into a compartment in the front of his coveralls, just above his waist. Pulling the hood up so that it settled securely around his face, he thumped hard on a brown bulge next to the heavy door at the end and to one side of the train-like area.

  The door slid up and out of sight with a slight hiss. Latt stepped through the doorway into the small room beyond, putting the mask over his face as he did so. The door closed automatically behind him. He took a couple of deep breaths and, satisfied that the air supply was functioning correctly, he banged the corresponding brown bulge by the outer airlock door. After a short delay, a brown light flickered next to the exterior door; Latt placed both hands against the surface and pushed hard. The door slid outwards slightly, then groaned like a tired bear, moving upwards and out of sight. Through the open doorway a partial view of the planet beyond was revealed.

  A large expanse of sand and rock came into view as Latt walked out; everything looked red or orange, even the sky was tinted a hazy shade of yellow. Latt didn’t give the scene much thought; he just stepped between the larger rocks, turned left and walked until he reached the trailer. This took less time than he remembered from his first outing; now his mind was compensating automatically, as it had on other, similar occasions, for the unique visual effects of a specific planet, the disconcerting lightness of his body caused by lower gravitational forces, and the nebulous but restrictive sensation of being encased in the fluff-covered clothing that served the Controllers as a vacuum, low pressure or toxic atmosphere suit.

  From the trailer, Latt could see the complex of buildings that he had set up. There was the power/utility module, the storage and life support structure that doubled as his temporary living quarters (the part that was shaped like a train carriage or railcar), and at the far end of it was the large, dome-shaped and light-weight building which housed the laboratory equipment and computers. Attached to the side of the laboratory dome a smaller dome was visible, one of the three ultra-light-weight sleeping areas that he had constructed of the remaining materials left over from the lar
ge dome, and then painstakingly attached to the domed laboratory structure when the ‘Controllers’ had directed him to set up sleeping / isolation quarters for the scientist, his wife, and his friend.

  Over it, glowed the adequate but unspectacular light of the nearby star around which the planet circled, which to a human would seem not much brighter than the light from the full moon. To Latt, concerned as he was exclusively with staying alive, the brightness of the star and the atmospheric conditions were as good as or perhaps better than that experienced on the planet of his birth and his captivity. There the pollution was so bad that it was rare for the sky to be clear enough to ascertain the location of that planet’s own sun, and the noxious fumes in the air sometimes caused even hardy workers like himself to collapse in fits of coughing and continue in an incapacitated state until they died, sometimes after weeks in agony. At any rate, it was not much different from the last few planets that the Controllers had examined and declared unfit to serve as their people’s new home.

  He opened the rear doors of the trailer and jumped easily up the three or four feet from the rubble-strewn ground to the interior. Although the refrigeration unit was no longer functioning, the tremendous, steely cold of that planet’s night had made the temperature inside the trailer lower than it had ever been while travelling Earth’s highways. The change to daylight had softened the cold, but not by much. Latt picked up a box of frozen dinners at random and bounced back down to the sandy ground. The cold seemed to be affecting him, though he knew that the insulating properties of his suit made that impossible.

  Still, he closed the doors quickly and turned around, intending to walk as briskly as he could back to the familiar surroundings of the temporary buildings. Instead, he found himself staring at the huge, foreboding black bulk of the Controllers’ ship. It lay, nose toward him, like an impossibly gigantic ebony bullet. The drive units along the side that was visible to him were like old musket balls next to the bullet. Musket balls a full one hundred feet in diameter, stretching down the side in an evenly spaced row of nine. Seeing some movement through the tiny windows hundreds of feet up on the front of the ship above him, Latt dropped the box, hastily crossed his arms behind his back and tipped his head back in the human equivalent of the Controllers’ gesture of surrender. After holding this position for at least twenty seconds, he retrieved the box from the rough ground and hurried back through the airlock of his multi-purpose, self-powered life support building.

  A few minutes later, Latt placed one of the foil trays from the box of ultra-frozen dinners on the slab and replaced the cover. He timed the experiment, for that was what it was, with his own timepiece and ensured that the food cooked for the same length of time as did the food that his prisoners had eaten. Within a few minutes, the flavour of the convenience food started to permeate the laboratory once more, and Latt’s stomach began to growl again, just as it had throughout the prisoners’ mealtime. He found himself pacing impatiently around the laboratory as the last few minutes seemed to drag.

  Finally the proper time had elapsed, and he lifted off the cover eagerly and removed the tray with a folded piece of cloth in exactly the same manner he had seen Terry and Isaac use. He picked up a spoon and tasted a small portion of the meal, burning his tongue slightly in his haste. The flavour seemed to awaken his taste buds, making his hunger pains double.

  He forced himself to sit back for a few minutes, waiting to see if he would begin to feel as sick as his prisoners had become after eating his food, but it seemed that the only effect of his caution was to stir his stomach into a greater frenzy of anticipation. Latt decided the taste was worth any price, so he leaned forward and began a serious attack on the contents of the tray in front of him, starting him on the route to becoming the first man from another planet to have gorged on North American convenience foods.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Memories moderate with time, documentaries never do – Winseuw, Arshonnan narrator

  Suddenly the blackness was punctured by countless tiny points of light, and both Richard and Karen, seemingly afloat in a sea of stars, gasped as the majesty of space filled their souls and seemed to reduce them to cosmic bacteria, lost in the immense body of the Galaxy. The effect was totally different from that obtained when the Galactic Cluster star field was displayed on the upper half of the Moss Room; in that instance the impression was of laying out on a hilltop on a summer night. Now, in the stark, clear vacuum of space, both of them were somehow surrounded by and involved in the scene. Even the relative scarcity of stars made it somehow more awe-inspiring. Neither of them said a word.

  They both noticed the black patch that was spreading slowly across the stars, and realized at the same moment that it was some kind of spaceship, silhouetted against the star field. It came closer, moving silently towards them. Presently they could see that it was shaped like two spheres, one in front of the other, joined by a cylinder of slightly lesser diameter. The surface gave only the slightest hint of a reflection, and was devoid of features, like a pebble worn smooth by the tireless action of waves over countless centuries. Intuitively they both realized that it had to be Citadel.

  Tutor’s voice burst forth, shattering the dream-like quality of the scene.

  “Actually, the records indicate that this is a simulation of the approach to Earth of ‘Scout Craft Seven’, known to us as Citadel. Despite the convincing quality of the illusion (an automated feature provided by the manufacturers, apparently), there was no other ship in the area to take these shots. Views of the planet, which follow shortly, were taken from the Scout Craft or remote monitors set up by the landing party, and therefore only this scene needed to be simulated to provide an overview of the initial circumstances of the voyage. Scout Craft Seven was released for general service to Commander Vochan; the crew numbered eight in total, comprised of Senior Scout Gartnal, Scouts Sheldrif and Melleny, and Junior Scouts Rictoner, Helnert, Hamgern, and Nichton, and the aforementioned Commander, of course.”

  As Karen’s mentor spoke, Scout Craft Seven floated serenely past, and the ‘camera’ panned, following the sombre ship and revealing a brilliant blue planet, swathed in clouds. The glow from the planet filled the room, revealing Richard and Karen, huddled together; unconsciously drawing on each other’s strength as the mysterious past of Citadel unfolded before their eyes. As the ship moved slowly away, silhouetted now against Earth’s majesty, Karen leaned forward in an unconscious attempt to keep her home in sight.

  Richard glanced at her face, studying for a moment the delicate features that had first caught his eye, just two days before. It seems like I’ve known her for an eternity.

  The projection brightened and she sat back suddenly, a look of surprise displayed clearly on her face, her eyes sparkling a deep blue. Richard turned back to see a room he had never seen before, full of control panels and equipped with several viewscreens and animated schematics. At the centre of the scene, standing behind a holographic projection of Earth that repeated its rapid, three hundred and sixty degree rotation in a short-looped sequence about every ten seconds, was a tall, dark-haired man in a jumpsuit much like those worn by Karen. He looked about thirty years old, a subtle hint of nervousness showed in his expression, but he attempted to compensate for this with an overwhelmingly arrogant stance. He leaned back against one of three high-backed chairs that faced the main control panel.

  “The Council gave me the responsibility to protect this planet from your mind powers. They realized that I would not be overawed by your ‘superior’ thoughts. I am in command.” He seemed to sneer directly at Richard. “I will personally ensure that your memories are blocked before we land. There will be no contamination of this planet’s development. Or would you prefer that I eliminate any locals that you ‘touch’, to preserve this planet’s state of development?”

  “You know that’s nonsense, Vochan. Only the minds of the most junior of trainee Scouts are that loose.” The view changed to show the dissenter, a fair-haired man about t
he same height as the first person, seemingly in his thirties, with a sparkle like diamonds in his eyes. Karen gasped; her fingers dug into Richard’s arm painfully as she took in the appearance of the man.

  “Why, even Nichton, the most junior Scout we picked for this mission,” he continued, trying hard to be reasonable, “graduated from that category over seven years ago, I don’t believe that –”

  “Sheldrif, are you trying to suggest that I am acting improperly?” Vochan asked incredulously. “I have total control of this mission. I cannot be affected by your minds. Remember that. Perhaps the Council anticipated your contempt for authority, and that is why they chose me as Commander.”

  The man named Sheldrif started forward, but a shorter figure with dazzlingly bright shoulder-length hair came into the field of view and laid a restraining hand gently but firmly on his arm. Richard found it difficult to think as a flood of thoughts and emotions from Karen filled his mind.

  It’s her parents! The family resemblance was quite striking, especially with Karen’s mother, who looked as Richard now imagined Karen would look in her twenties.

  “That was uncalled for,” she started angrily. “However, Commander Vochan,” she emphasized. “We accept that the Council gave you that authority.” She paused to allow him time to appreciate her statement fully. “I would suggest that a Commander’s Briefing Session be called to consider the options.”

  “I must remind you that only the Commander can call such a meeting,” Vochan began icily. He stepped towards the two dissenters.

  Sheldrif started to move forward again, but stopped as he noticed the Commander’s hand was now holding a small black instrument.

  “Yes, and I don’t need to be able to read your thoughts to understand your frustration. The structure of this Scout Craft is impenetrable to thoughts such as your breed transmit.”