The Second Ship Page 4

  “Hmm. Could be a headset,” Mark mumbled. “Here, let’s try them on and see.”

  “Wait just a minute!” Jennifer said, her hand catching Mark’s before he could proceed. “Looking doesn’t mean punching every button or pulling every lever on this ship. Even if we keep this secret, we have to investigate in a way that doesn’t destroy the ship, or worse, us.”

  Mark ignored her, sliding the band smoothly over his temples.

  Stretching her own band gently, Heather slid it up over her head, exactly as she would her headphones. It settled naturally into place, elongating slightly so that the small balls on the end slid into position directly over her temples. The slight pressure actually felt nice.

  Heather smiled. “These actually feel pretty good—like a temple massage. Come on, Jen. Try on a set. They don’t seem to do much else.”

  “Yeah, Doc. They haven’t exactly killed us yet.” Mark grinned.

  Jennifer reluctantly slid onto the stool next to Heather, then, after close examination, slid the band into place. Within a few seconds the tense look disappeared.

  Jennifer smiled. “You’re right. They do feel good. I could almost take a nap if I wouldn’t fall off the stool doing it.”

  Mark, leaned forward, letting his palms rest flat on the desktop in front of him, then straightened suddenly as a cry of surprise escaped his lips. Fire exploded in Heather’s brain as every neuron in her skull triggered simultaneously. She struggled to remove the headband, but found her limbs unresponsive. Every nerve in her body pulsed with an intense tingling as though all her limbs had fallen asleep and were now waking up with a vengeance.

  She screamed, dimly aware that nearby her two friends screamed in accompaniment, the sounds barely registering in her overloaded brain. Although Heather had never dwelt on death, she had always assumed death would creep up on her suddenly when it came, taking her with it in a couple of ticks on the clock, perhaps preceded by a long fall off the rocks or the screech of car brakes.

  Now death tore at her from the inside, and it was taking its sweet time.

  When Heather was small, she had been badly shocked trying to get a bagel out of the toaster with a knife, but that had been an instantaneous trip into the land of nod. This endless eruption of every nerve ending in her brain held her here, unwilling to let her consciousness flee from the agony. For what seemed like an eternity there was only pain. Then, as if all her pain receptors had been seared out of existence, it faded, replaced by a flood of imagery, hallucinations that lacked the faintest connection with any reality she had ever known.

  Three-dimensional symbols rolled past her as beings with large heads and skinny torsos darted about in all directions. They spoke at her. No, that wasn’t right. They thought at her, sending out the strange symbols that encapsulated those thoughts, and when she questioned them, her questions rolled out toward them as much simpler symbols that encapsulated each question. She understood none of it.

  Shift. Gone were the beings and their symbols. She found herself strapped in a craft darting between the planets of a star system, the walls of the craft completely transparent, as if she was sitting in a large soap bubble. A ringed planet darted by, its many moons careening away as her ship banked so hard it seemed the gravitational strain would destroy it.

  Then she saw it, flitting across her field of view, far ahead. It expanded in a magnified view, surrounded by circles and crosshairs as her ship attempted to establish a lock on the target.

  The long cigar-shaped craft she chased suddenly sent out a spear-like vortex that rippled through the space separating them, a narrow tube in which the view of the stars beyond twisted and bent.

  Heather’s ship torqued hard right and dropped, the ripple passing within a hundred meters of her. In response, a beam of solid red pulsed outward from her own ship, missing the cigar ship ahead, but pulverizing a small asteroid as they passed through a field thick with the spinning rocks.

  Ahead, a blue planet with a single moon loomed large, the other ship racing toward it. Almost simultaneously, the weapon systems on the two ships fired again.

  The red beam played across the other craft’s cigar-like surface, bubbling and warping parts of its hull as the enemy’s vortex beam punched through her own ship, sucking four small bodies out through the hole into the vacuum of space. All maneuvering control lost, Heather’s ship plunged onward, and the surface of the blue planet rose up to meet her.

  The imagery stopped. Heather stumbled from the stool, pulling the alien band from its place on her head. The room spun around her, only gradually stopping as she sank to her knees. Beside her, Mark leaned against the wall, his own headset held tightly in his fist. Struggling to his feet, he held out a hand to help her up.

  Heather’s eyes swept the room, panic threatening to rob her of her breath.

  “Jennifer?”

  Mark shook his head. “I already looked. She’s gone.”

  7

  There were times when loneliness hung so heavy in the air that it stuck a lump in her throat, the tears at the corner of her eyes upwelling from tiny springs of misery. Tonight, here by herself in Rho Lab, long after everyone else had left, Nancy knew all too well the source of her feelings.

  She had been raised straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, the tenth child in a New England family of eleven children, all girls except for John, the baby of the family. All those wonderful growing-up years, her organized mother carefully delegated tasks to each of the kids in a way that had given them a wonderful camaraderie. Despite the family’s old, New England money, a rigorous work ethic was a requirement rather than an option.

  Then it had been off to Princeton to study computer science, her bachelor’s degree followed quickly by her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University. Working with Dr. Stephenson at the Los Alamos Laboratory had been a dream come true, a dream that had grown far more wondrous once she had first been shown the Rho Ship.

  How things had deteriorated in the two years since that day. Now everything had come to a head in a way that was about to force her to betray the famous Dr. Stephenson.

  With the information she had discovered on his personal laptop, there could be no doubt that he would not be deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory much beyond tomorrow. Despite an authorization to access Dr. Stephenson’s computer that came directly from Senator Conally, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she felt soiled.

  What would her family think of her now?

  She removed the USB memory stick, sticking it in her purse, then powered the laptop down, flipping the lid closed with a snap.

  “Find anything of interest?”

  Nancy jumped up with a gasp of surprise, sending the chair rolling across the floor like a runaway shopping cart in a supermarket parking lot. The lean form of Donald Stephenson stood staring at her through eyes that showed no hint of emotion. Nancy had seen eyes like those before. Shark's eyes.

  Her hand fluttered to her breast. “Dr. Stephenson. You startled me.”

  “Did I? Imagine my own surprise when I return to my lab to retrieve an item I forgot, only to find you in my private office, browsing through files on my personal computer.”

  Nancy felt sick. The confrontation had been coming, but she had expected to do it tomorrow, during the relative comfort of the normal business day, not here in the semidarkness of the most secret facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, probably the most secret laboratory in the country. Rho Lab.

  “Doctor Stephenson, I am sorry that you had to find me like this. I have just completed an audit of this program for the Senate Intelligence Committee, the information on your laptop completing the information I required. I will be filing my report tomorrow.”

  “And may I assume that your report will not be favorable?”

  The unflinching calm of the deputy director's face made Nancy more nervous with each passing moment. “I am afraid that you are correct. I would say that I am sorry, but my compassion for you d
ied once I realized that there are large portions of the work you are doing here that are hidden from the other scientists, even from the US government. And from what I can tell, you have made considerable progress unraveling portions of the alien technology that have tremendous implications, although I do not claim to understand many of the derivations in your equations.”

  “Very impressive. Of course, that is why I selected you for the program. Still, you surprise me. I doubt that there are more than a handful of physicists and mathematicians in the world who can understand many of those equations, even fewer who could have hacked their way past the encryption on my laptop.”

  A thin smile crinkled the corners of Nancy's lips.

  “You are not the only one who was first in your class. All that will become moot once my report is filed tomorrow.”

  Dr. Stephenson stepped closer, leaning down so his face was only inches from her own, but Nancy did not flinch.

  “I was not ready for this, young lady.”

  He paused a moment before continuing.

  “Do you know the significance of the Greek letter Rho? I chose it from an inscription in Olympos, an ancient Lycian city. It is an alphabet oracle which, loosely translated, says, ‘Your journey will proceed faster with a brief delay.’ In other words, don’t go off half-cocked, but don’t wait until the other fellow shoots you either.”

  A mirthless grin spread across Dr. Stephenson’s sharp features.

  “You think your report is complete, but it is not. If you will follow me, young Dr. Anatole, I will show you something that may make you reevaluate.”

  Without waiting for a response, Dr. Stephenson turned and strode out of his private office in the laboratory. Curiosity aroused, Nancy followed him into the huge room where the Rho Ship rested, its cigar-shaped hull clamped between curved supports that held it elevated a full ten feet above the floor. Stephenson did not pause to look at the ship, instead continuing directly beneath it to where the ramp led upward into the doorway through its hull.

  Nancy followed him into the narrow passageways that honeycombed the interior of the ship. She had been inside it often enough over the last year and a half that it should have seemed routine to walk through these alien rooms and hallways, but it didn’t. There was nothing beautiful about the ship. Everything was gray, shaped for efficiency and utility, not aesthetics, functionality trumping beauty at every twist and turn.

  Dr. Stephenson stopped before a wall that blocked access to the back third of the ship. In all the years the research team had studied this ship, nobody had accessed beyond this wall. At least, that was what everyone believed.

  As the deputy director’s hands pressed against it, fingers tracing out a complex set of patterns, the wall slid open.

  Nancy gasped.

  “Now, now, Doctor,” the deputy director's voice called out to her from within. “Do you want to make a complete and accurate report to the good senator, or don’t you?”

  With a deep breath, Nancy stepped through the opening, her eyes sweeping the large room that stretched out before her. The aliens had made no attempt to group equipment in any way that made its functionality apparent, instead positioning everything so that the tubes and bundles of conduits that connected the various apparatuses optimized efficiency. Very narrow walkways led through, around, even over the various machines and instruments. Spreading her arms in wonderment, she turned back toward Dr. Stephenson.

  His fist hit Nancy in the stomach so hard it sent all the air in her lungs whistling out through her teeth. She twisted into a fetal ball, her shoulder dislocating itself as she hit the floor. Try as she might, Nancy could not uncurl herself as she struggled to breathe. Dr. Stephenson strolled slowly around her prostrate form, moving in suddenly with a kick to her injured stomach that rolled her three times across the alien floor.

  Nancy vomited; the pain was so great, she prayed she would lose consciousness. She could no longer focus well enough to see Dr. Stephenson’s face, although his feet were clear enough, pacing slowly back and forth before her. Once more he stopped, his foot seeming to swing toward her in slow motion, impacting her midsection harder than either of the two previous blows, sending her rolling into the wall.

  The pain embraced her, squeezing so hard that her vision narrowed to a straw's-eye view, a view outlined in red. Into that narrow tunnel swam the deputy director's face peering down at her, his features lined with concern.

  “My dear Dr. Anatole. Your breath is bringing a bloody froth to your lips. Now I am not a trained physician, but that can’t be good. One or more of your ribs must have punctured a lung.”

  As Nancy struggled to breathe, the sound of footsteps moved away from her, ringing loudly through the floor her ear rested upon. The steps stopped for several seconds, then returned, growing in volume until she thought her eardrums would explode.

  Then his face was back, leaning down very close as he took her head in his hand, twisting it up to face the dull gray ceiling. His other hand moved slowly down toward her neck, a long hypodermic syringe clutched in a three-finger grip. And within that syringe a dull, gray viscous liquid quivered with an energy all its own.

  The needle pricked her neck, and Nancy surprised herself by finding the strength to scream, the sound echoing out of the ship into the darkness of the empty lab.

  8

  Heather staggered to her feet, her brow wet with a cold, stinging sweat that dripped into her eyes.

  Mark cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled. “Jennifer! Hey, Sis, can you hear me?”

  Heather joined the yelling, fear clutching at her heart. Suddenly, the doorway leading out of the room snicked open. Framed against a multicolored backdrop, Jennifer smiled calmly at them, her alien headband still firmly in place, its coloring now a shifting rainbow pattern that made Heather a bit dizzy looking at it.

  “Jen! Get that damned thing off your head. It nearly killed Mark and I.”

  “Relax. It didn’t try to kill us.”

  Mark shook his head. “It may not have tried, but it came damn close to doing it. I thought my head was going to explode.”

  Jennifer stepped into the room, the doorway sliding closed behind her. “It scared me too. But once the download started, I sort of got the hang of it.”

  “Download? What the hell are you talking about?” Mark asked.

  “Well, it just came to me. All that imagery and strange symbology. You saw that too, right? Well it seemed like a link to the central computer system, so I focused on visualizing questions. That caused me to get new imagery back, most of it incomprehensible. But I managed to open the door.”

  Heather glanced down at the floor where her own headset lay. “Then why did it hurt so bad?”

  Mark nodded. “I’ll tell you why. The damned thing puts off so many microwaves that it cooked part of our brains.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Jennifer said. “I think the aliens used the bands to communicate with the ship's computers. Instead of keyboards and monitors, they put these on and their thoughts were tied in to the system. The computer ‘talked’ back with images, sounds, maybe even feelings.”

  Heather nodded. “That makes sense. We haven’t seen anything resembling manual input devices to the onboard systems. No keyboards, joysticks, mice, nothing.”

  Mark scowled. “What’s the point of a system that fries your brain in the process?”

  “Maybe it didn’t hurt the aliens,” Heather said. “I’ll bet the connections to our brains are different than the aliens’. Maybe the computer had to explore its way around our heads to figure out how to link up.”

  “And so it has. Now put your headsets back on and follow me. I want to show you something,” Jennifer said.

  Heather hesitated. “I don’t really want to go through that again.”

  Mark took a deep breath, then placed the band back on his head. After several seconds he looked over at Heather. “It’s okay. No pain this time.”

  Heather stooped to pick up her own
small band. Sliding it into place, Heather focused on the doorway, which cooperated by sliding open. “Interesting. One other thing before we proceed,” Heather continued. “Did anyone else see imagery of the ship crashing?”

  “Sure did,” said Mark as Jennifer nodded in agreement.

  “Maybe the computer automatically gives a dump of the last entries in the ship’s log whenever it detects a new user,” Jennifer ventured.

  “Hard to say,” said Heather.

  Mark headed toward the door. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s take a look around.”

  Heather would rather have taken a bit of time to analyze the amazing amount of information that had already presented itself before going a further. Certainly the computer link theory cried out for investigation. Still, Jennifer had already been inside the next room and Mark was not about to be slowed down, so her theoretical musings would have to wait.

  While not as spacious as the room below, this one bled beauty. It reminded Heather of the Museum of Modern Art at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Abstract table shapes, as though blown from a glass blower’s pipe, grew from the floor, still pulsing with the colors of the melting flame.

  Several of the tall slender shapes pulsed in rhythm with their own heartbeats, each alive with cascading colors.

  Heather touched one of the structures rising from a single pedestal, the feel as soft and smooth as baby oil. As the pressure of her hand increased, the material molded itself to match the shape. No doubt if she lay atop the thing, it would cradle her body in complete comfort.

  “What do you think? Medical Lab?” she asked.

  Jennifer paused in her examination of one of the delicately curved, lamp-like objects. “Some of these are definitely responding to our body readings, but who knows? I tried to focus a question about this thing, but all I get is a sequence of the strange symbols, some warbling sounds, and imagery of the light patterns shifting. I don’t have enough information to make any sense out of it.”