Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  “But I must end this. Every time I record, I use up more of the memory space that the Tutor will expand into as it develops. So finally, Karen, a message for you, if by some miracle you manage to penetrate the maze that contains this record. Do not mourn my passing, or that of your Mother, whom you never knew. We had wonderful times, much happiness, as we studied and grew together. There may be a higher purpose to our existence here – no, there must be – but as we never discovered it, we contented ourselves with those we did know, such as learning of the wonders of this planet, the beauty of the night-time sky, the ever-increasing knowledge of mankind, and bringing you into the world. We took great satisfaction in helping the people we met, and the knowledge that we shortened battles, helped repair the injured that otherwise must surely have died, and guided the settlers to find ways to live in peace with the Indians, and each other, is without price. Of course none of them ever realised that we were different in any way, and none of them ever noticed our home here, high above the ocean, and no one ever thought to build on this wonderful patch of land, though to their minds it has always been quite empty.

  “Remember that Citadel is yours alone now, unique to this planet, and far beyond the understanding of present-day humanity. Much as the atom bomb almost tipped this world off balance just a few years ago, so would your home, this Citadel, with which you are so familiar and comfortable, affect the stability of mankind, if its existence were discovered. This I have always known, though I cannot explain quite how.” Sheldrif started to wilt like week-old cut daffodils before an open furnace; he reached over and picked up a glass of dark brown liquid, thick and steaming, which must have been left somewhere just outside the field of view of the recording device. He leaned back as he drank the entire contents, slowly and laboriously. After a few moments his strength seemed to return.

  “Karen: protect this Citadel from the people of Earth, and protect the people of Earth from this Citadel, for they are surely our cousins, if not our brothers.” He turned to look at the sleeping child once more.

  “May we meet again, when you come to the place where Melleny and I will be waiting for you. I love you, Karen.”

  The view from the comparatively recent past dissolved; the stars and the moss reformed. Silence descended on the room like a thick blanket.

  Playback was over.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When the uninteresting is no longer so, changes will come – Penchetan

  As Richard and Karen watched, totally engrossed in the replay of the Scout Craft’s log, a pair of U.S. Air Force F-15s banked slightly to port on their approach to the east coast of the State of Maine. Flying at forty five thousand feet in “line astern” formation, no radio contact was required to complete the manoeuvre. Other planes in the area were carefully tracked by the pilot of the second jet, which was actually flying about fifty feet lower than the leader, leaving the first jet free to scan for the simulated enemy in their joint exercise.

  Captain Mark Redwood, flying lead, had joined the Air Force about thirteen years after the Viet-Nam war, and had settled into a routine of peacetime surveillance. A few of his colleagues had flown in the Gulf war, and a part of him wished he had gone too. Overall, however, he had to admit that the prospect of death or injury in battle was not something he particularly relished. Now, as his time as a fighter pilot was almost over, every moment was special. He was savouring the blue expanse, the wispy clouds, the sensation of freedom and the joy of being alone in the universe; this was why he loved flying so much.

  A buzzing from his monitors disturbed his feeling of peace, and moments later his radio burst into life.

  “Red One, I am experiencing difficulties with the E.W.; I think it’s due to some kind of ground-based radar transmitter, but the power rating is so high, I can’t get a precise fix on it,” Captain Nick Schmidt announced in a concerned voice, shattering the illusion of isolation from his Eagle directly behind and below Mark’s.

  “Red Two, I confirm.” Redwood toggled his radio to transmit, then digested this information, considering his options.

  “What action, Red One?”

  “Red Two: continue on present course and continue scanning. I’m going to check it out.” He banked steeply and disappeared rapidly out to sea, his plane descending gradually in a shallow dive. “Down-load your data to base as soon as you are out of flood range. Then stay in the area; I might need you to back me up.”

  Thirty seconds later, Captain Redwood banked again and started a power dive, his twin Pratt and Whitney turbofans still at much less than full throttle, watching his speed carefully to maintain it below Mach One to avoid a sonic boom, with all the environmental and (more significantly) political ramifications that would entail. Within minutes he was flying at three hundred and fifty feet at Mach point nine, and, according to his Heads-Up-Display, heading directly for a small coastal town called Redcliff. He banked gently to starboard so that he could circle around behind the site, intending to hit the coast about three miles north of the point from which the radar beam seemed to emanate. High above, Red Two circled the vicinity, transmitting all information obtained as coded data to ground support personnel.

  Mark Redwood throttled back his twin turbofans to a small fraction of their maximum thrust of nearly twenty-four thousand pounds each, and came in with flaps down at less than two hundred miles per hour. Once he reached the coast he throttled up slightly and climbed to clear the cliffs, but kept his aeroplane as low as he had ever flown. He made a slow, gently curving turn to the left as he neared the town and the source of the radar signal.

  “I’m just over-flying the town, the source should be direct–” Sparks flew across his displays, and the fire suppression system warning lights flickered briefly. His gloves stuck to the controls and acrid fumes seemed to sizzle from the non-metallic components of his cockpit, blurring the small volume of air instantly.

  Mark barely caught a glimpse of a long black structure as it disappeared under his port wing. He found his aircraft slipping suddenly to the left as it crossed the cliff edge and continued out over the ocean. He struggled to correct, dragging his recalcitrant hands from their previous positions, pulling parts of the plastic coating of his control column off on his gloves as he attempted to compensate for the loss of power and control.

  The curve increased into a spin, and he saw the sparkle of the sea over his head as his Eagle abruptly lost all power.

  The extra height above sea level as the cliffs shrank rapidly behind him was enough, but only barely. In the eerie silence he nursed the crippled craft through the slow spin, until the planet revolved back into its normal orientation, and he hit the Emergency Eject as the water rushed closer. The next few seconds were a blur, but then he found himself hanging beneath his parachute, in relative peace. Below him the crests of the waves soon covered the splash point of his once formidable Eagle, and it was as though it had never existed. He twisted his harness and turned, just in time to see the black bulk of the structure that had seemed to be the source of the rogue radar, before he dropped below the level of the cliff. It looked to him like some kind of Victorian Folly, a caricature of a crusader’s castle.

  “This is Red One, my Eagle is splashed,” he transmitted with his suit-mounted emergency radio. “I cut free, but I’ll hit the water within seconds. The cliffs are close behind me, over.”

  “Red Two confirming transmission. We’ll send in the Coast Guard, Red One, and have you fished out.”

  “Keep away from that radar source at all costs. It toasted my ship, and I’m a bit crispy, too!” He fingered the rigging of his parachute, and found the nylon was partly melted, and some of the lines were fluttering free in the air, causing his descent to be faster than optimal. The water suddenly rushed up to meet him, shocking him with the instant cool of the Maine coastline in the fall. The parachute was carried sideways by the wind, until it almost cleared his vulnerable, suited form, and then the canopy sank over his head. Mark ducked under the edge and f
reed himself from his escape gear after a few seconds of fumbling at distorted clips. He inflated his floatation device and leaned back, looking for the cliffs, anxious about their proximity. The cliffs seemed further away, indicating a favourable tide or current, and a quick death on the rocks now seemed unlikely. A brief roar broke the comparative tranquillity of the gentle swell, and Captain Redwood raised one hand high as his colleague Schmidt skimmed above the breakers and spotted his parachute on the waves.

  “I see you, Captain! There’s no signal out here – where did you contact it?”

  “It must be that black structure near the cliff. I know it sounds crazy, but there’s nothing else there.”

  “I’ll get some video.” Captain Schmidt briefly engaged the afterburners, and took his Eagle into a steep climb. The glow from the afterburners faded, the craft stalled (as he intended) and Nick brought it neatly around so that it was returning along the same track, but at a slightly higher altitude. He was flying just above the cliff level, and spotted the mysterious black building easily. There was still no evidence of a radar beam or any kind of microwave transmission on his instruments, so he made sure he obtained a video record of the suspected source as he passed, and kept well clear so that he would not end up in the salty waters below. He wiggled his wings to signal farewell to his waterlogged leader and started to climb away steeply again.

  Mark Redwood watched as the jet disappeared into the distance. His teeth started to chatter as the cold seeped into his bones. He pulled off his helmet and gloves and let them sink into the waves. His floatation device was losing air and his treading of the water became not just a technique to generate heat but also a survival necessity.

  “Cooked one minute, put on ice the next!” He muttered between clenched teeth.

  The microwave pulse that had, with such indifference, destroyed his Eagle, heated his body, melted his clothing and sabotaged his parachute, ceased a few minutes later.

  ***

  Redcliff at night was like many other small towns; the place seemed almost uninhabited, it was so quiet. The only thing that ever disturbed the almost absolute peace was the local police cruiser on its nightly patrol, or the occasional truck passing through. A black and white cat, out for a night’s hunting, slunk quickly away as the rumbling of one of these rare night time intruders broke the silence. As the truck moved slowly down Daniel Street, a man jumped out of the open side door – the door on the side opposite to Citadel – and ran alongside. Another figure in the shadowy interior passed him a metal box about three feet tall and two foot across, which he placed on the sidewalk about fifty yards up the road from Citadel, on the opposite side of the street, taking care to keep the truck between him and the black building throughout the process. He sprang back up and rode until the truck was passing the strange structure, at which point he jumped down again and placed another box on the sidewalk and climbed aboard once more. The entire procedure was repeated as the truck reached a point about fifty yards down the road from Citadel, then it rolled around the next bend and out of sight.

  As soon as it was sheltered behind the curve of the road, it slowed to a halt. A moment later the engine was switched off, and the same man climbed down; this time he paused to adjust the night-vision goggles on his face before hanging the small remote-control camera units around his neck and walking off into the dense undergrowth. Ten minutes later he returned, having mounted all three units on trees in the woods behind Citadel. He climbed back up, nursing a hefty bruise he had received when he had walked into or tripped over a very large and dark rock in the nearly complete absence of light beneath the leafy canopy. The truck’s engine burst back into life as soon as he had closed the side door. It pulled away from the curb in a cloud of partly burned diesel fumes and rolled down the road towards town, leaving the coastal road at peace once more.

  By this time, the cat had settled down to wash in the middle of the road, just a little way down from Citadel, but it slunk away again at the unprecedented sound of another diesel-engined vehicle coming nearer. This truck pulled over to the side of the road outside the next house down from Citadel, and the engine stopped. The driver jumped down, slammed the door behind him, and walked away briskly towards the town centre. After a moment of trepidation, the cat walked back to examine the vehicle. It sniffed at one of the many wheels, then it walked off, its curiosity satisfied. High on the side of the trailer, unknown (and of course of no concern) to the cat, was a bright and newly painted logo: Walker Brothers Moving Inc.

  To all appearances the truck was now deserted; the lights were all off and the previous silence had returned. It would seem that no one was left in it to cause it to creak slightly from time to time, but creak it did. Inside, behind the facade that was painted on the exterior, where stacks of furniture and boxes were to be expected, the true story was quite different.

  Ed Baynes, dressed in a military style sweater over a dress shirt and dark blue jeans, watched impassively from his padded swivel chair behind his rather cluttered desk near the rear of the truck as his team, complete, in the field and ready for action, now, for what he considered their first true NUIT investigation, quickly and efficiently activated their surveillance equipment and checked for system errors.

  He checked the images on the somewhat basic but effective flat screen exterior monitors at the back of the truck briefly; in one direction there was a total lack of action, in the other, nothing moved except for the small cat which was walking up the road, waving the tip of its tail from side to side as it padded lightly along. He left the surveillance of the exterior to his security officer and returned his attention to the interior of the vehicle, starting a mental review of the characteristics and capabilities of each member of his team.

  According to his natural preference, Baynes watched Judy Brisson first. She was wearing a roll-neck sweater in a pale grey that hung rather loosely on her, and some no-name jeans that had faded to a similar shade of pale blue. She sat hunched over in front of a huge panel of electronic equipment, checking settings and switching on units to allow them to warm up. Tall, slim, with close-cropped brown hair and bright blue eyes that might have emphasized the smile of a less serious woman, Judy was not known for making a habit of light-heartedness. What she was renowned for was her reputation as the foremost practical, in-the-field expert in passive remote sensing; it was joked that she could detect the warmth left over from a week-old camp fire, but that an ice cube would not melt in her hands. She was the brightest spark of the group, however, according to Ed.

  Leroy Fraser, so dark he could hardly be seen against his console, was dressed in deep blue sweats. His six foot three inch frame was leaning at somewhat of an angle in front of the controls of his remote sensors. As Baynes turned his attention to him, Leroy pushed his chair back a little, stretching his right leg out unconsciously; this was the leg that had been shattered seven years previously in a freak accident during gun drill, resulting in a steel pin in the bone and an end to his promising future as a world class sprinter, and routing him, rather circuitously, into the most unique government investigative team in the country.

  Eric Kirouac, lounging casually against the rear door of the observation vehicle, stared intently at the security monitors; there was nothing for him to do but be prepared for the impossible. His M16-A2 rifle was propped up in the corner, and his battle fatigues and tanned face made him look ready to rescue a dozen prisoners-of-war single-handedly. His close-cropped blond hair topped a marvellously muscled body only six feet above the floor of the truck, but without his confidence-exuding slouch he would stand seven inches higher. Eric had received a number of commendations for his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, something that had convinced Ed to request him for NUIT to function as their security officer.

  Baynes himself was in somewhat of a quandary, though he hid it well from his team. He could not decide if this microwave incident was partially or even totally unconnected with the two previous investigations that he had handled so recen
tly, or if perhaps it was directly connected. If the latter was the case, the setting-up of this forward observation post was a big mistake that he could expect to pay for with his life and the lives of every member of his team. He half expected to see the blinding light that Captain Stuart had experienced, followed almost instantaneously by his own cremation; he knew that the laser that could create such havoc from miles away could not miss from a hundred yards. His logic had told him, however, that there was an inherent difference with this situation, so laser action was not likely. As the minutes passed without any such event, he started to breathe more easily. Despite his reasoned approach that had suggested that their destruction would not be the logical consequence of his actions, he had still feared subconsciously that the great unknown would, like a nightmare, wipe them out.

  While his team continued setting up their equipment, Ed sat back and reread the report of the F-15 crash, the fly-by, and the accompanying stills from the video. He agreed with Captains Redwood and Schmidt that the structure was very interesting, and found it strange that it was not one of the most popular tourist attractions of the area. Nice location, too. He studied the sequence of stills, noting the cliffs on the coast and the trees behind and further up the hill.