1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) (29 page)

“I...suspect,” Tesla said. “That we now...have one quarter...the air...we had before.”

“Enough?”

“Possibly.”

Billy stopped their forward momentum by rotating the poles and bringing them to a shrieking halt against the bulkheads to either side.

“Thank you,” Billy said.

Ekka came up beside them. “The alien ship,” she said. “It’s alongside. We have to hurry.”

[ 115 ]

Tesla gestured toward the midship cargo hatch window when he reached the central atrium of the ship. There, plain as day, the alien vessel noticeably slowed and parked itself next to the
Arcadia
. Its solar sail slowly began to fold. Its gauzy material shimmered, like so much flimsy, see-through silk.

“Tell us what to do, Nik,” Billy said.

“We need wire of some sort to tie the poles together. Quick!”

Ekka launched herself toward the engine room hatchway.

“I’ll fetch the alien sword from the bridge,” Tesla said quickly, and made ready to spring forward toward the bridge. He turned to Billy and said calmly, “Place one pole touching the main cargo hatch doorway. The other, tie it to the first such that both together  reach to the central shaft. It must come within the length of an alien swordblade from the spire. Do NOT touch the shaft with the pole, nor place it anywhere near...that.” Tesla pointed to the spray of sparks further along the shaft length.

Billy nodded.

“There’s no way of knowing whether there is free current running along the outside of the gash from where it is leaking. Believe me. Electrical current can go anywhere water can. I’ll be back!”

Tesla sprang and flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

[ 116 ]

Ekka could not locate any wire in the engine room. She did, however, recognize the one item that might do in a pinch. The thing must have come unattached during Jack Ross’s final moments. Or perhaps the dying body had ultimately rejected it in a final defiance of nature over technology. She clutched the large robot arm of Jack Ross and formerly of Cyclops, pushed off from the forehead of the gargantuan transmogrifier, and flew upward with it.

[ 117 ]

Ekka emerged from the engine room and fought the urge to scream. The large window beside the main cargo hatch revealed the floating figures of four eight-limbed alien spacesuits. But these wore
armored
spacesuits.

Billy noted Ekka’s open-mouthed expression and shot a look out the window. One of the creatures bore a large barrel-shaped object with a set of triangular steel teeth protruding from one end.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Billy said. “Alien marines. And they brought their pet shark.”

“Tesla!” Ekka shouted.

As Billy and Ekka watched, the business end of the barrel began slowly spinning, and as it did, the outermost row of protruding steel teeth began spinning counter to the direction of spin of the head of the thing. Then the row inside it began spinning the other direction.

Billy turned to Ekka. “Um. Shit.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

Billy noticed Jack Ross’s robotic arm. “What the hell are we going to do with that?”

“We’re going to use Jack’s fist to clamp these two poles together.”

Billy gave her an appraising smile. “I like you,” he said. “You’re smart.”

[ 118 ]

On the bridge, Tesla retrieved the alien sword from beside the pilot chair, pivoted and fled back the way he’d come.

Before he left the bridge, he heard it: a bone-jarring stacatto and a high whine.

“My God!” he exclaimed. “They’re drilling into us!”

Tesla flew from the command deck far faster than he had entered.

[ 119 ]

Billy and Ekka covered their ears, but the vibration shook their teeth in the sockets. It was painful.

Billy removed his hands from his ears and grasped  the robotic arm from the air.  He manipulated the hand, prying the fingers slowly open. He braced the end of the pole against the door where the aliens were cutting into the ship, then walked backward along the pole until he reached the end. Then he placed the pole in the grip of the robot hand.

Ekka followed suit and helped Billy by inserting the end of the second pole next to the first. There was too much space. The two poles didn’t touch.

Billy worked his way up the oversized arm and reached inside the exposed housing of the upper arm. He grabbed a cable and pulled. The elbow bent slightly. He grabbed a smaller cable and pulled hard. The thumb of the great robot hand closed. He found another cable and pulled. The forefinger closed. He grabbed the nest of remaining cables and yanked with all his strength. The hand clamped shut and the two poles clanked together. They both heard it, even through the din from the drill.

Billy glanced at the doorway and saw it was glowing red hot.

Ekka was the first to notice the bright light from above and the immense shadow that flew before it. She jostled Billy and gestured him to move the poles closer to the central shaft.

They both looked up in time to see Nikola Tesla ride a lightning bolt down the central shaft. His hands clutched the varnish of the shaft itself and his feet were on the pommel of the alien sword blade. The sword was like the blade of an ice skate beneath him, and the form of man and blade could have been a downhill skier bending almost horizontal for a death-defying jump. Tesla traversed four stories of the central shaft in less than two seconds

Billy and Ekka let go of the poles together and fell backwards and away from each other.

At the last instant, Tesla pulled up on the point of the alien blade by using his twisted suit coat as reins.

There was a blinding flash of light that did not end for some time.

[ 120 ]

Tides ebb and flow. The sun rises and the sun sets. Love begins and love dies and is reborn again. Vision fades. It also returns.

Ekka Gagarin knew this sea. It was the sea of thin air inside the space ship
Arcadia
. And it was home. For a time she could see nothing, could hear nothing except the distant hum of the transmogrifier, and could feel nothing but lassitude, beckoning to her. The phasing, multicolored spots came first before her vision, bursting, however dimly, in all the colors of the spectrum in spectacular shapes and patterns. At first she tried to discern some meaning to it all, and then decided she knew what it was. Her sight was returning to her and her eyes were already open.

“Billy?” she called weakly.

“Here,” he said. He was far away and the sound was faint, but she could hear him clearly.

“Nikola?” she called.

“Here,” he said. Tesla was closer to hand.

“Can you see?” she asked.

“My sight is returning,” Tesla said. “I knew what was coming and closed my eyes at the last second. But the light went right through my eyelids anyway.”

And then Tesla laughed. At first it was a bemused chuckle, but soon it grew.

“What are you laughing at, you damned Slavic jackanape?” Billy called, but even he was bemused by Tesla’s laughter.

The laughter went on for a full minute, and Ekka and Billy waited as their vision returned. They saw each other at each end of the Arcadia and Tesla tumbled in the air between them, an alien sword in his hand.

“Because,” he said. “One trillion volts. I have ridden the lightning bolt. I am Thor. I am Zeus!”

“I don’t know about Thor,” Ekka said. “Or Zeus.”

“Me neither,” Billy agreed. “But I do have to admit. You, sir, are a god.”

[ 121 ]

There was no evidence of an alien spacecraft outside the ship. There was no wreckage, and there were no bodies. There was, however, a perfectly spherical shiny object out there, tracking alongside the Arcadia.

“What do you think it is?” Ekka asked Billy.

“I can’t say for sure, but you remember that shark-looking thing they were trying to eat the door with?”

“The drill,” Tesla said.

“Yeah. That. I think that’s what it is now. Just a ball of metal.”

Tesla nodded thoughtfully. “I daresay there will likely one day be many uses for the great ether. There is no telling what may be developed here. I should like to have a look in the library of the Patent Office in a hundred years’ time. There is no telling what mischief we may find.”

“We’d better get to the bridge,” Ekka said. “We have no Judah Merkam to plot our course.”

“Nor Koothrappally to figure the math,” Billy said.

“But we do have a pilot,” Ekka said, and nudged Billy’s arm.

“I say. We do at that,” Tesla said, and punched Billy’s other arm. “A damned good one.”

[ 122 ]

The Earth filled the bridge viewing window.

Billy had spent countless hours in the library of his former girlfriend, studying maps, looking at globes of the Earth. He knew all of the continents and most of the major countries and their relation to each other. His mind, however, went blank as he confronted the great slowly turning blue and white globe before him.

Ekka was down inside the engine room, ready to cycle the transmogrifier up or down at his command through the speaking tube. Tesla rode beside him in the seat to his right to give him advice and encouragement.

But it was all The Kid at the controls of the craft.

“I read about you in a dime novel,” Tesla said.

“Oh yeah?”

The Earth now filled the entire sky.

“Yes. Your shootouts. The Lincoln County War. Your final comeuppance when Pat Garrett came for you and shot you in a bar. Wonderful stuff.”

“I read that one too,” Billy said. “That looks like Australia down there. Over there is Africa. I’d say we’re coming down on the whole wrong side of the world.”

“Ah,” Tesla said. “We’re antipodal.”

“Speak for yourself,” Billy said. He looked at Tesla, who was about to explain. Billy smiled. “Just kidding. I know what it means. It means opposite side. I may be a back country yayhoo, but I’m not illiterate.”

Tesla likewise smiled.

Billy pulled the speaking tube toward him. “Ekka, ramp up the power a bit.”

“How much?” she asked.

“I have no idea. Just a smidge.”

“Done!”

“Say, Nikola,” Billy said. “Watch this.”

Billy the Kid did a barrel roll, pulled back on the yoke to line up the
Arcadia
with the closest landmass.

“India,” Tesla said. “Would that Koothrappally were here.”

“Me too,” Billy agreed.

[ 123 ]

The
Arcadia
came through the upper atmosphere at twenty thousand miles per hour. She was, however, no child of inertia, but was instead the product of gravitation. Ultimately, her wake was the affinity of the music of the spheres.

On the bridge of the ship, the man who was born William McCarty and who had taken the name Billy Bonney out of deference to his mother, flew the gravitational winds of Earth as though he were on the back of an Apache-bred pinto.

He stabbed for the heart of the great orb rushing up to meet them by calling for a cut in power and then pressing the nose of the ship downward. He rolled again counter- clockwise to get his bearings on the landmass by using the ocean and the small island beyond.

“I think that’s Ceylon,” Billy said.

“Yes. It is.”

Billy craned his neck to the right and the coast of Africa beyond.

“Um, Billy,” Tesla patted the dash.

Billy looked up, saw the cloud layer coming at them. They were coming in too fast.

“Full power!” Billy called into the speaking tube.

“I’ll
try,
” her voice came back.

“What do you mean, ‘try’?”

“Yes,” Tesla said. “What does she mean?”

Billy moved the right stick to the right and then rolled into the turn. The clouds whipped by them as if they were passing through a fluffy white curtain.

“The gear shifter is...sticky,” Ekka replied. “Also it’s bent. I think someone hit it with something.”

“Jack Ross,” Tesla and Billy said together.

“Give us what you can, darlin’,” Billy said back to her. “Um. Please.”

The hum from the main coil increased, but not nearly as much as it should have.

“Do S-curves to shed some speed,” Tesla said.

“Yeah. Sounds right.”

Billy shot over a vast, lush landscape with only a vague idea of where the great island was located ahead. He was so low over land that he couldn’t see the water of the Indian Ocean. He took three S-curves one after the other. Their speed bled away and the hum of power on the ship increased and decreased, coming in fits and starts.