Dragonstar Destiny (17 page)

A LOUD
mechanical humming rose up from the hatchway, incongruent with the primeval sounds of the Mesozoic Preserve.

The airlock was in action on the hatchway.

The aliens had entered. The hatch on the space side had closed. The hatch on the interior was opening.

A great hiss sounded as the air pressure in the lock equalized.

Colonel Phineas Kemp felt as though his backbone had been connected to a voltage cable. Tingles of expectation shot through him. The creatures that emerged from that lock were their only hope of returning home. But more than that, they were the race that had
made
this ship: an awe-inspiring thought if there ever was one.

“How long?” Mishima Takamura asked Dr. Robert Jakes.

“I make it about two minutes to emergence,” said Jakes in a matter-of-fact professional voice that doubtless masked the suspense they all felt.

“And the translation computer?” inquired Takamura.

Ensign McDonald looked up from the blocks of speakers and other equipment rigged by a power-pak in an omni terrain vehicle. “Got the full complement here, sir. The aliens will, of course, have to cooperate ...”

“I suspect they’ll know exactly what we’re doing,” said Takamura.

“On the other hand,” Becky Thalberg pointed out, “if they’re so terribly advanced, they’re bound to have translation equipment of their own that will analyze our language.”

“My experience has always dictated to be prepared for all circumstances,” Dr. Jakes said, looking up from the lights and quivering needles on his own equipment.

“And so say I,” said Kemp, hefting up his rifle to prove his point.

“Colonel Kemp, I appreciate the need for your form of preparation,” said Takamura. “But could you please put the rifle to one side? I suspect the boarding aliens will be sufficiently intelligent to immediately recognize a weapon and may well take exception to it pointing at them.”

Kemp stifled his immediate response to Takamura. Instead of telling the man what he thought of him, he brought the weapon down, marched the ten meters to the nearest OTV and slipped the rifle behind the vehicle. He stepped a meter away and held up his bare bands. “There you go, Takamura. No weapon, but it will be close enough so as to be available.”

Takamura nodded, the tension showing in his face as he redirected his attention to the hatch.

Which was opening.

“Oh dear God, I don’t think I can take this,” said Kate Ennis. “I’m going to have to sit down for this one.”

She went and sat in the driver’s seat of the OTV which Kemp had placed his rifle behind.

“Well, Phineas,” said Becky Thalberg, “this is what we’ve been waiting for. Too bad Amos Hagar didn’t survive for this moment.”

“Maybe his ghost is still lingering somewhere about,” suggested Kate Ennis.

“I don’t know. With my luck, he’d get eaten by
these
aliens,” Kemp grumped.

“Quiet!” said Takamura. “Something’s coming out!”

“No,” said Mikaela Lindstrom. “It’s just some kind of ...” She stepped closer. “Some kind of light!”

“Don’t go any farther!” said Takamura.

“Yes,” concurred Jakes. “I’m getting an odd radiation reading here. Nothing harmful... but still, damned different from what I was expecting.”

A dome of purplish-red radiance grew from the opened square hatchway like a holograph of a soap bubble being blown from a pipe. It grew to a height of a good twenty-five meters, then abruptly stopped. Lightning-like spurts of electricity crackled on its periphery. The smell of ozone spread out to the human observers, like the forefront of a thunderstorm.

“What the hell is going on?” Jakes said, staring in astonishment at his readings, then looking at the parade of rainbow colors beginning to march across the light-sphere.

“I guess we just have to sit tight and find out,” said Takamura. Nonetheless, Kemp noticed his jaw clenching as he loosed the snap on his gun holster.

Kemp took two steps closer to his rifle, then turned and shaded his eyes from the sparkling illumination pouring off the light-sphere.

Previously clear, the bubble faded into translucence as its colors darkened and a light-shot mist began to creep through its interior like thick tentacles from below. This mist began to fold in on itself, roiling like the future within a fortune-teller’s crystal ball.

And then forms began to float up from the hatchway, assuming a patterned position within the sphere. The flashes of sparks on the periphery and the occasional stabs of light from below illuminated patches of the form. Riveted grey metallic swaths. Spider-like articulated legs. An occasional glimpse of black scales, pale veinous flesh.

“It’s some sort of force-field, that bubble,” Dr. Jakes said after the first wave of awe had washed over the welcoming party. “Looks impenetrable by normal means, but conducive to sound.” He looked over to McDonald, who was clearly shaken by the sight before him. “Try a standard message, Jim.”

McDonald nodded. He brought a transmitter to his mouth. Flicked a switch. Began to speak.

His words were amplified and broadcast over the speakers, as well as via various radio bands.

“Greetings. We welcome you. We are of the planet Earth. We mean you no harm. We wish to speak to you. We wish to communicate.”

There was no answer from the sphere. The smoky stuff within merely thickened, obscuring the floating figures within.

“Greetings,” continued McDonald. “We welcome you. We mean no harm. We are natives of the planet Earth. We have been stranded upon this space vessel. We need your help. Who are you?”

No response.

“Maybe they’re recording the language for translation purposes,” Takamura suggested. “Repeat the messages, and then keep on talking. Continue with the procedure we discussed before.”

McDonald nodded and obeyed.

When he was finished, he took out the large drawings that had been prepared. Drawings of the Milky Way Galaxy, the Sol system of planets. Of Earth, of human beings, lettered with the representative English names.

McDonald flashed these posters to the impassive and mysterious aliens.

There was no vocal response.

But halfway into the cards, a side of the bubble began to bulge.

“Look!” said Becky. “Something is breaking out of it!”

Something indeed, noted Kemp. A smaller bubble broke loose from the first. Humming and flashing with sparks, it seemed to carry one of the inhabitants of the sphere. Then another bubble separated from the main sphere, and another; until three separate force-field-enclosed aliens hovered in front of them. Hovered oddly humming, the black fog within the shells roiling, obscuring the creatures themselves.

Then the humming changed frequency. It slid up, then down, then up, in a definite pattern.

“You getting that, McDonald?” said Takamura. “I think they’re trying to communicate.”

“Yes, sir,” said McDonald. “Analysis processes engaged.”

“Shit,” said Kemp. “That doesn’t sound like communication to me. That sounds like some sort of—”

Before he could finish the sentence, a blinding star of light flashed in the middle of the central sphere.

“Weapon!” screamed Kemp.

Even as he said the word, a beam of intense energy flowed from the generating sphere to McDonald’s equipment.

The translation computer was blasted to bits, and McDonald was thrown aside like a rubber doll.

Another beam, less intense, streamed from the bubble-alien to the left, enveloping Takamura in a momentary dazzle, then winking out.

Takamura crumpled to the ground.

“So much for a friendly first contact!” said Kemp. He leaped for his rifle in the back of the OTV. Becky Thalberg joined him there for cover.

Immediately the three bubble-aliens commenced moving, firing beams at the IASA members and the Saurians alike, striking them down as they had struck down Mishima Takamura.

Kemp aimed, and fired off a round of his rifle directly into one of the aliens, with absolutely no effect.

No way he could deal with the things this way, he thought.

“C’mon, Becky,” he said. “Get into the OTV. We’re getting out of here!”

Becky flashed him a frightened look, then, without arguing, she leaped into the back of the machine. Kate Ennis was already at the controls, her arms instinctively covering her head. Kemp jumped in the passenger seat, immediately punching up the bubble top. As it came down over their heads, he turned to Kate.

“Okay, I’ve seen you drive these things before. Let’s get out of here!”

Kate shot one look at Kemp, then looked out onto the clearing, where the aliens were picking off the IASA members one by one. Mikaela Lindstrom had just fallen; and Kemp groaned with the sight.

“Are they killing them?” Kate asked, voice on the edge of hysteria as she started the OTV.

“No, looks like some kind of stun-beam,” said Kemp. “All the same, I don’t want it getting me. Do you?”

“No,” she said, and swung the wheel, and then engaged the vehicle at maximum acceleration. “Where to?” she asked.

“To the main camp near the Saurian boundary. At the controls of this ship ... We’ll be able to regroup there with the others, and maybe put up some resistance. We don’t want any alien race thinking we’re a bunch of wimps, do we? They’ll have no respect for us.” He noticed Becky looking out the back. “Well, are they following us?”

“No,” said Becky.

But that was all she said.

Kemp looked behind himself after making sure that Kate had the OTV well in hand. The scene there was one of total chaos, the aliens striking down the few remaining team members. Apparently none of the others had been able to reach their vehicles; no other OTVs were following this one’s example.

“Looks as though they’re letting us go,” said Becky. “They’re not even attempting to come after us.”

“Probably they figure they’ll get us eventually,” said Kate Ennis, wide-eyed. “l mean, how far can we go?”

“Well, we can go just far enough to put up a decent fight,” said Kemp, the image of Mikaela falling still in his mind.

“You’re right about the stunning,” said Becky. “Look ... they’re carrying the fallen into that bubble.”

Kemp looked. Sure enough, the bodies of his comrades were
rising ...
held suspended by some sort of force ... Then, escorted by the alien-bubbles, they were swallowed up by the force-bubble.

“Specimens,” Kemp muttered as Kate turned past a grouping of rocks and the view was obscured. “They’re taking them as specimens, the bastards.”

“Seems as though you were right, Phineas,” said Becky. “But then, maybe we’re only delaying the inevitable.”

“Don’t be so fatalistic, Becky,” Kemp said, turning his attention back to the way ahead and to Kate Ennis’s driving, “We’ll figure something out.”

“At least we can hope that the others weren’t harmed,” Kate said.

“I shouldn’t have let that idiot Takamura
do
this kind of thing,” Kemp fumed.

“Phineas, you can’t blame Mishima,” Becky said from the back. “And you can’t blame yourself. In this particular case, it was all of our decisions ... There was simply no way we could be sure what was going to happen.”

“What
did
happen was a chance we had to take,” Kate agreed.

“For all we knew, the aliens would be cute little bunny rabbits, coming to bring us Easter eggs!”

“Absolutely, Phineas.”

“No time for Monday-morning quarterbacking now,” Kemp said decisively. “We get back to camp, we dig in there, and then we wait for the aliens to come and get us.”

“Maybe they’ll be a little more polite this time,” Kate said.

“Yeah,” said Kemp. “Maybe they’ll say ‘please’ before they use their stun-beams.”

“Is it a possibility we can use radios to contact them, talk to them, reason with them?” offered Becky.

“I don’t know,” said Kemp. “We’re going to have to think about this one. Think about this one real hard.”

They all thought about it in silence as the scenery rolled past.

The all-too-familiar primeval forests, the plains, the rocks, and the occasional herd of herbivorous dinosaurs grazing placidly, unaware that their Creators had just barged into their happy behemoth lives.

Kemp took a moment to supply Ennis, with directions back to the base.

Then he asked, “Would you like me to drive?”

“Hell no. I can do that. I want you, Phineas Kemp, to remember that you’re a top-notch leader. I want you to figure out how we’re going to deal with this incredible mess.” Her knuckles were white upon the steering wheel, and though she had never looked more beautiful, their time together was the last thing on Phineas Kemp’s mind. In fact, it was almost a relief. Yes, he
was
terribly upset about Mikaela—but nonetheless, he reveled in the fact that, with Takamura out as well, he was at the head of the situation. When they reorganized, Phineas Kemp would be in charge again, and since he functioned best in a crisis, since he was totally
alive
at such times, he knew he would be able to deal with the problem.