The Mothership (17 page)

“See that?” Dr McInness said. “The way it
tilted?”

Beckman nodded. “Yeah.”

“That’s thrust vector control. The craft
balances on a downward force, steering by changing its angle, just like a
helicopter or a rocket. That shows they’re subject to the same laws of physics
we are.”

“As opposed to what?” Markus asked. “Not
obeying the laws of physics?”

“As opposed to being so advanced as to
transcend science as we can conceive it,” Dr McInness said simply.

Beckman turned to Cougar. “Swing around to
the north. We’ll try to get in behind them.”

“Affirmative,” Cougar said, then started
down the slope.

“If you’re going to contact them, I suggest
you try it without weapons this time,” Dr McInness said.

“Sure, Doc,” Beckman said as he quietly
adjusted his sidearm, determined not to let them take another weapon away from
him.

* * * *

Beckman stepped
out of the forest into a cleared corridor carved through the wilderness like a
road. Every tree and fern, every rotting log and weathered boulder had been
crushed flat into a perfectly smooth surface. The grain and color of the
trampled vegetation could be seen, but not their original shapes. It was as if
the natural materials of the forest had melted together. Beckman knelt and
touched the surface, finding it spongy. Behind him, the rest of the team
filtered out of the trees, looking up and down the corridor with collective
confusion.

Cougar pointed to a streak of silver that
ran through the center of the corridor like a dividing line, the only unnatural
component of the elastic surface. “It’s laying that, whatever that is.”

Beckman walked to the center of the
corridor to examine the silver streak. It was approximately twenty centimeters
wide, and had the dull sheen of mercury.

Timer pulled his helmet off and scratched
his head. “Why are they building roads?”

“Cause they hate walking,” Nuke quipped.

Laura looked north and south along the
corridor with a shocked expression on her face. “It took millions of years for
this forest to grow, and they’ve destroyed it in a day!”

Hooper poked the road with the barrel of
his M16. “Looks way too permanent for my liking.”

Markus glanced at the sergeant
thoughtfully. “The Romans conquered the known world by building roads.”

Dr McInness scowled. “They have hypersonic
vehicles. Why would they need roads?”

Beckman looked along the corridor in both
directions. Every few hundred meters, a silver pole stood in the center of the
corridor, along the silver line. He trained his binoculars on the nearest pole,
to discover a metallic cross arm mounted on top, fitted with large diamond
shaped objects at each end. They were the same poles the transport vehicle had
lowered into the forest.

“If they’re sensors,” Markus said following
Beckman’s gaze, “They’ve detected us.”

“If they’re still building it, it may not
be active yet,” Dr McInness said as he knelt to examine the metallic line
embedded along the center of the corridor. “This line obviously connects the
towers, networking them if they’re sensors, or providing power?”

Beckman turned to Hooper. “We’ll follow the
road, you stay under cover. See if we can find what that transport was
delivering the poles to.”

Hooper nodded. “Back to the trees, people.
This ain’t no sightseeing trip.”

While Hooper led the team into the shadows
of the forest, Beckman, Markus and Dr McInness followed the corridor as it climbed
a hill to the south. When they neared the crest of the hill, they heard tree
trunks snapping and boulders shattering, but no sounds of earth moving
equipment. They peered over the crest to discover a large, beetle-shaped
machine silently inching down the far slope, crushing all in its path. The
crack of splintering tree trunks ceased as the beetle halted. A circle dilated
within the seamless rear of the machine, giving a glimpse of a dark interior,
then a pole fitted with a cross arm slid out on a metal cradle. When the cradle
was clear of the beetle, it rotated to the vertical and the pole slid toward
the ground. When the bottom of the pole touched the sealed surface, it glowed a
brilliant red, then slid slowly into the ground. Smoke billowed from the entry
point as the pole bored through the elastic surface into the ground below.
After several minutes, the pole had firmly embedded itself in the bedrock and
the smoke cleared. The cradle detached from the pole and retracted back into
the machine, then the circular opening vanished. A moment later, the cracking
of tree trunks began anew as the beetle started grinding northwards again.

“How far are we are from the landing site?”
Markus asked.

“Twenty-five clicks,” Beckman replied,
noting how the corridor curved away to the northwest behind them, while the
beetle shaped machine was crawling slowing to the southwest. “It’s crossing our
line of advance,” he added uncomfortably.

“Major, we don’t know what this technology
is for,” Dr McInness said, trying to allay his fears. “They might be measuring
the Earth’s gravitational field, or building an interstellar communications
system to call for help. It could be anything.”

“I hope you’re right, Doc,” Beckman said
unconvinced as he tried to gauge the distance to the pole behind them. “How far
apart do you think those things are?”

“About three kilometers,” Markus said with
the confidence of a trained observer.

Beckman turned back to the beetle, watching
its steady progress through the forest. “We better get started. I want to be in
position when that bug plants the next pole.”

* * * *

The snapping of
tree trunks sounded like gun shots as the rounded, silver-hulled machine
approached Beckman’s position. An invisible force beneath its hull crushed
every obstruction, effortlessly smashing boulders and knocking down trees,
blending their substances at a quantum level. High on the beetle’s steeply
sloping hull was a single horizontal slit window. Beckman swept his binoculars
over it, hoping to glimpse the machine’s operators, but saw only interior walls
and colored lights.

“Any time now,” he whispered, hoping they’d
calculated the distance from the last pole correctly.

Xeno and Virus readied themselves beside
Beckman, while the rest of the team formed a loose skirmish line further south.
Beckman had decided that Dr McInness, for his own protection, was not going
aboard. The scientist, disgusted at his exclusion, was now accompanied by
Tucker, who knelt beside him ensuring he obeyed orders. Surprisingly, Markus
had shown not the slightest desire to board the machine. He was satisfied
merely to observe from a safe distance. Beckman had already concluded Markus
was more than capable of looking after himself, and wondered whether the CIA
agent would simply slip away into the forest if they got into trouble, either
to go to the ship alone, or report back to his political masters. Even now,
Markus sat relaxing with his back against a tree, observing proceedings and
making detailed mental notes.

He’s a very self sufficient individual
, Beckman thought.

Dr McInness suddenly cried out, his voice
cutting through the natural sounds of the forest. All eyes turned toward him as
he scrambled backwards in fright, losing his glasses and his pack. Tucker
calmly whipped out his bowie knife and plunged the carbon steel blade into a
slender form slithering on the ground. He twisted the knife to the sound of
crunching bone, then held it up. The blade had impaled the cream-colored head
of a snake, its thin, copper-brown body measuring more than two meters in
length.

Dr McInness relaxed, then sighed
embarrassed and began feeling for his glasses. Muted chuckles and knowing looks
rippled up the line.

Vamp whispered to Xeno, “He’s got to be a
virgin.”

“Are you going to fix that?”

“I might,” Vamp said with a mischievous
twinkle in her eye. “Wouldn’t take long.”

Laura leaned past Tucker and studied the
snake. “It’s a taipan.”

“Skinny runt,” Tucker said, unimpressed.

She gave Dr McInness a sober look. “It’s
the deadliest snake on Earth, fifty times more toxic than a cobra. If it’d
bitten you, you’d be dead already.”

Dr McInness adjusted his glasses,
swallowing nervously. “I see.”

Tucker looked at the snake with renewed
respect. “Is it good eating?”

“Not if you swallow the poison sac,” Laura
said.

Nuke chuckled. “Fifty times deadlier than a
cobra, and he wants to eat it!”

Tucker scowled at Nuke, then with a flick
of the wrist, tossed the dead snake at him.

“Hey!” Nuke said as he swatted it away,
afraid of being scratched by its fangs. “Get the hell away, man!” He scrambled away
from the snake’s lifeless body as laughter rippled up the line. “That’s not
funny!”

“Not as funny as if it’d bitten your ass,”
Steamer said, sitting with his back against his pack while Tucker’s granite
face cracked a smile.

“Shut the hell up!” Hooper hissed angrily.

Beckman’s eyes returned to the silver
beetle-like machine. It had stopped and now floated silently a short distance
from their position. It was as high as a two-story building, and as long as an
eighteen-wheeler.

“Let’s go,” he said, jumping to his feet
and jogging toward the rear of the machine with Xeno and Virus close behind.

They emerged from the trees two thirds of
the way along the machine’s length. Beckman felt the hairs on his legs prickle
as the field beneath the beetle came in contact with his skin. He ran alongside
the machine to the circular opening at the rear where a pole was already
sliding out on the cradle a meter above his head. Virus and Xeno linked hands
for his boot, then heaved him up into a long compartment that ran the length of
the vehicle. Silver metal poles were stored on wall clamps to the right, cross
arms to the left. The cradle and armature that passed the poles through the
hatch were attached to a small rectangular machine in the center of the
compartment.

He pulled Xeno and Virus up into the
compartment, then gave Hooper, watching from the tree line, a thumbs-up. Hooped
nodded, then Beckman led them to the far end of the compartment and watched the
cradle outside release the pole once it was embedded in the ground. The arm
slid silently back into the cube-shaped machine, then the circular opening
irised shut, leaving the cradle compartment filled with a soft yellow-orange
light. In a few seconds, their eyes began to sting as the air changed from
earth normal to something unpleasantly breathable.

Xeno ran her eye over the compartment. “No
markings.”

“And no control panels,” Virus added,
noting the lack of doors or hatches leading to other sections of the vehicle.

Beckman remembered a lesson drummed into
him at Groom Lake: Cave men wouldn’t know how to use a cell phone or a
computer, because such things were inconceivable to stone age man.

Would I recognize a door?
he wondered, suspecting he was now the
cave man.

“There’s got to be something here,” Virus
said, “even if it’s just for maintenance access.”

“Maybe their stuff never breaks down,”
Beckman replied as he curiously touched the gray wall at the end of the
compartment. It was cold, metallic and perfectly smooth. He turned to speak to
his companions, but found himself facing another blank gray wall. Disoriented
and confused, he spun around, discovering that he now stood in the control room
with the slit cockpit window at the far end of the room. He’d felt no sensation
of movement, yet was in a different part of the vehicle.

Neat trick
, he thought as he stepped out of the transport
alcove.

The low ceiling forced him to stoop,
telling him the builders of the machine were shorter than Homo sapiens. He
glanced back at the small rectangular alcove, which offered no clue as to how
he’d been transported there. The control room itself contained two small seats
in front of featureless black panels below the slit window. The panels sloped
gently toward the chairs, and appeared to be made of a glossy black plastic
material. There were no controls on the panels, no displays or lights, nothing
that indicated a means to control the vehicle. Additional seats on opposite
sides of the room also faced featureless black panels positioned beneath wall
mounted screens filled with tiny swirling symbols. Beckman felt slightly
disoriented looking at the screens, but couldn’t decide why.

The cockpit’s slit windows provided a clear
view of slender white tree trunks in brilliant sunshine being knocked down by a
powerful force extending from the front of the machine. Incredibly, while
continual destruction was being wrought outside, there was no sound or sense of
movement inside the vehicle.

Xeno appeared in the alcove, with an
astonished look on her face. “I was staring straight at you, then you were
gone!” She exclaimed as she stepped out of the alcove.