The Second Ship Read online

  The crowd continued to fill the park, and soon the sky at the eastern end was filled with an assortment of competing kites. Scores of kids and adults held everything from a basic diamond with knotted cloth tail to massive multi-box contraptions, carefully controlled by professionally engineered handles on twin cables. A minor scuffle broke out between parents as one of the fancier kites became entangled with a looping black-hawk kite.

  As lunch wound down and the friends prepared to abandon their grill duties, the deputy director, Dr. Donald Stephenson himself, stopped by to sample what were reputed to be the finest hot dogs and hamburgers at the festivities.

  As Dr. Stephenson stepped up to the grill, open-faced bun already decked out with tomato, onion, and lettuce, he paused, his hawk-like gaze sweeping the adjacent table. “Do you have any more mustard?”

  Jennifer moved toward the condiment box tucked behind the table. “I’m sorry, sir. Let me get it for you.”

  As she stepped forward and bent down to grab the bottle, she tripped, plunging face-first toward the hot grill.

  Mark moved so quickly that the startled deputy director had no time to get out of his way, a glancing blow sending the startled scientist spinning away. Grabbing his falling sister's waist, Mark’s powerful arms tossed her over the top of the grill, sending her tumbling to the grass on the far side.

  Hearing the crash, Heather turned with the long hot-dog fork still in her hand, the twin tines burying themselves in the flesh of the spinning Dr. Stephenson’s upper arm. The deputy director doubled over, cursing as he staggered away. Heather froze, watching the blood drip from the tongs of the fork in her hand.

  Stunned, unable to move, Heather could only watch as Mr. Smythe was the first to reach the deputy director's side.

  “Sir, are you all right? Here, let me take a look at that.”

  With a violent thrust of his hand, Dr. Stephenson shoved the startled technician away. “I am fine. I don’t need your assistance. Thank heavens those tongs missed me. See? Not even scratched.” He pulled up the short sleeve of his shirt to reveal an undamaged arm.

  Moving quickly back toward the grill, Dr. Stephenson angrily snatched the fork from Heather’s nerveless fingers.

  “If you kids can’t safely operate this station, then you shouldn't be near it. Get away from it now,” he bellowed. “Try something your small brains can handle. And stay away from me.”

  Without waiting for a response, the deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory stormed off, the hot dog fork still clutched tightly in his hand. The Smythes and McFarlands gaped after him.

  “Dad, I’m so sorry,” Heather sobbed.

  Her father moved over and hugged her. “It’s all right. You didn’t hurt the mean old bastard. The fork missed him.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, anyway,” Jennifer said, her face burning a bright red. “What a jerk.”

  Mr. Smythe nodded. “Too bad you missed him.”

  Heather wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, giving her best effort at a grin. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to lose it like that.”

  Mrs. Smythe patted her arm. “Anyone would have, dear. Come on, gang, the burger and hot dog station is now closed. Let’s go check out some of the other food.”

  As they worked their way around the food circuit, Mark walked between Jennifer and Heather, his arms circling their shoulders.

  “When we get a chance, we need to talk,” Mark whispered. “No matter what the good Doctor said, I saw that fork go knuckle-deep in his arm. I saw the blood. I can play it back in my mind. I don’t know how he did it, but he was sure as hell hurt. And he made damned sure he got that fork away from you before he stormed off. Three guesses as to how long it took him to wipe it clean.”

  Heather stopped, shock prickling her scalp. She had seen the prongs stab him, had felt them penetrate the skin and muscle.

  As their parents moved on toward the homemade brownie station, the three companions stood close together, their eyes gazing off to where the deputy director had disappeared. And as they looked, a sudden chill settled over them.

  13

  Heather smiled. With church over, she was scheduled to link up with Jennifer and Mark for the afternoon, just as soon as she could get changed and hustle over to their house. It wasn’t that she minded church—quite the opposite. Her church was a positive and uplifting place filled with people of good heart; the weekly service was a pleasant escape from the myopic attitudes that presented themselves in day-to-day life. The singing was a wonderful side benefit.

  While Heather’s family was happily Lutheran, Mr. Smythe referred to himself as nondenominational agnostic. Heather actually thought that both Linda and Jennifer Smythe would enjoy tagging along with the McFarland family to their church; they just hadn’t talked themselves into making time for it yet.

  But today she and her two friends would finally get the chance they had not had in weeks: a chance to get back out to their starship. They were going to have to name it. Referring to it as “our starship” didn’t seem either appropriate or palatable to her. The Rho Ship was already taken. The Los Alamos Ship? The White Rock Saucer? If they left it up to Mark, it would be the Bandolier Bagel or the Taos Taco or some other God-awful name. Oh well, it would come to her.

  By the time Heather had dressed in her jeans, tennis shoes, and an old pullover sweatshirt and lifted her bike from its hooks in the garage, the Smythe twins were waiting in the driveway. The hour-and-a-half ride out of White Rock and then along the rough mountain bike trail to The Mesa left her exhilarated, the excitement rising as they got closer to the spot where they would hide their bikes and proceed on foot.

  After the picnic escapade, the three friends decided that telling anyone else about their ship would be foolhardy. It would probably lead to the ship being turned over to the loving mercies of Dr. Donald “Miracle Healer” Stephenson. Considering what they had seen using the headsets and Stephenson’s twenty-year hold on the Rho research, that seemed like something to avoid at all costs.

  Heather hoped that her gut feeling was a byproduct of her personal dislike for the man. Still, caution seemed a wise course for the moment.

  With that in mind, they proceeded carefully, checking over their shoulders as they rode through the backcountry. At the edge of The Mesa, they stopped to watch and listen. With the pungent scent of pine strong in the clear mountain air, the silence of the wilderness was undisturbed. Even the soughing of the wind that normally swept the high canyon country was missing.

  After securing their bikes in thick brush, high on the slope, Heather, Mark, and Jennifer worked their way to where the holograph hid the cave entrance. Just outside of the cave, they paused, taking time to experiment with the illusion. Heather stepped forward until it looked like half her body was gone.

  Mark laughed. “It’s a good thing that’s more comfortable than it looks.

  She ducked inside, followed by Mark and Jennifer. Although the sun should have been visible from the entrance, no direct light passed into the cave. They could see out, but only dimly, and they had to allow a couple of minutes for their eyes to adjust to the familiar magenta glow.

  With little time to waste, they moved quickly across the cavern and climbed up into the ship. Reaching the small room on the second level, each of the three took a deep breath. Then, once again, they placed the flexible bands on their heads.

  This time Heather paid close attention, wanting to see if she had imagined the band changing shape when she put it on. She hadn’t. As the marvelously light material settled into place, it adjusted itself to the shape of her head, lengthening so that the bead on each end settled over her temples.

  The sensation of mild vibration felt wonderful, like a gentle, professional massage. Relaxation rippled through Heather’s body until she could feel the cool air and her cotton clothes against her skin.

  This time there was no automatic dump of imagery, just the heightened awareness and relaxation. It was as if the computers of t
he ship recognized her. Heather glanced over at Mark and Jennifer.

  Mark nodded at her. “I could get used to this.”

  Jennifer grinned. “Sorry, Bro. Relaxation time is over. Let’s stick to the plan. Maybe we can get some answers out of the computer.”

  Without further urging, Mark led the way up, scrambling through the hole onto the third deck, then reaching down to lift the two girls.

  Bypassing what appeared to be a deck filled with sleeping quarters and a recreation area, they continued upward.

  The top deck of the ship was a single large room. Four pedestal-mounted couches seemed to sprout from the floor near its center. Heather found it difficult to judge distance in the room, a side effect of the curvature that made it hard to tell where floor stopped and wall began, an effect magnified by the lighting.

  Jennifer spread her arms wide, spinning in a slow circle. “Command deck?”

  As if in response to Jennifer’s question, the room vanished, leaving Heather and her friends hurtling through the vastness of empty space.

  Vertigo assailed Heather as she struggled to breathe, her heart hammering in her chest.

  “Wow! This is so cool!” Mark’s voice caused her to glance to her left.

  There, standing beside her, were Mark and Jennifer, the former grinning broadly while the latter cupped her hand over her mouth as if to conserve oxygen.

  Standing! They were standing. So was she, for that matter, but on what? Below her feet, an endless void of stars and galaxies dropped away.

  And how were they breathing?

  Mark strolled toward four dim shapes floating in the vastness nearby, plopping down atop the nearest of them, sending it spinning in a circle.

  Suddenly, understanding dawned on Heather. It was one of the chairs they had just seen. They were still on the ship’s command deck, but somehow Jennifer had activated the view screen. The whole deck was one massive view screen with resolution so good that you couldn’t tell what you were seeing wasn’t real.

  Fighting back a wave of nausea, Heather followed Mark, seating herself in the chair to his left while Jennifer sank into another.

  Mark held his hands up like he was on a roller coaster ride. “Awesome.”

  It was only then that Heather realized she was clutching the moldable material of the chair so tightly she had formed imprints of her fingers. With great effort, she forced herself to relax.

  “Jen? You all right?” Heather asked.

  “I’m getting there,” Jennifer replied. “I started breathing again, so that’s good.”

  Mark laughed out loud. “You girls are a riot. We could charge big bucks for this.”

  Jennifer scowled. “Yeah. Right before they throw us in prison for not reporting this thing.”

  Heather gazed out, stunned by the beauty of the scene. It appeared to be a recording of space the ship had passed through. The crew probably sat in these very chairs when they needed to observe what was happening outside. Or maybe the entire deck served some other function, as a massive movie theater or computer monitor.

  “I wonder.”

  Without bothering to explain what she was wondering about, Heather suddenly reached up and removed her headset. Although she had no doubt that the others were still seeing vast reaches of interstellar space, to her the room looked exactly as it originally appeared.

  “Very interesting.”

  14

  For more than two hours they roamed the ship, headsets on and off, taking those first halting steps that babies take to reach their mother’s outstretched arms. And though their access to the central computer remained limited, it felt great to make at least some headway.

  As Heather had speculated, the visualizations were triggered, not by the room, but through the headsets, which broadcast imagery and other sensations directly into their brains. Being on the upper deck was not necessary, but the room’s design enhanced the experience. The more cluttered the room, the more those distractions intruded upon the imagery.

  Also, the chairs on the command deck, or more accurately, individual couches, cushioned the body in such a way that she could not even tell she was sitting in them. It felt almost like she floated weightlessly. This made it easier to focus on the sights, sounds, and feelings the computer delivered.

  Most interesting was that each person had his or her own individual view. While Mark might be experiencing the ship cruising into Earth’s solar system, Jennifer might see herself surrounded by strange instruments and symbology, while Heather watched something completely different.

  Getting the computer to respond was still somewhat frustrating. If she managed to create a clear question in her head, then the ship would respond with a combination of imagery, sensations, and symbology. But that only happened if the ship's computer understood what she wanted.

  Heather pictured the starship’s arrival and the computer responded, correcting her initial thoughts as the events played out all around her. The plunge through the atmosphere in pursuit of the Rho Ship, followed by the ground rushing up and smashing into her face, left her gasping for breath, even after playing it back five or six times. It was like floating in a clear soap bubble with scenery flashing by all around you, a somewhat disconcerting feeling when that imagery involved a crash.

  As the afternoon waned, Heather confronted more and more roadblocks as she sought to refine her ability to extract information from the computer. The computer presented information when prompted, but most of what she saw was incomprehensible, three-dimensional symbols. She could not decipher the meaning, whether it was the alien language or, more likely, their version of mathematics.

  That made sense. Many of the questions she had been asking would have mathematically based answers. Asking something like “What caused the crash?” probably caused the computer to spew out the equations describing the damage.

  Although she had grown up in the Los Alamos school system, surrounded by the kids of the world’s top scientists, and despite her exceptional record in all her honors math courses, interstellar math had not yet been covered.

  Leaning back in the couch, she let her mind relax. Think, Heather. Think. She visualized a grid containing the origin of a coordinate system. A perpendicular set of lines labeled “x axis” and “y axis” appeared to float before her.

  She drew a single point located right three ticks and up four ticks from the origin on the grid, then followed up with another point, connecting the two with a line. It was there, floating perfectly in the air before her.

  Right, she thought. She added another dimension to the grid to form a cube, and into this cube she drew spheres, ellipsoids, cubes, and pyramids.

  It was easy. The equations came faster and faster, as if she had fumbled around and found a switch in the dark. A part of her mind turned on, big time.

  Adding a fourth dimension was easy. She took her three-dimensional grid cube, shrank it to the size of a pinhead, then formed a line of these cubes. Five dimensions formed from a plane of the 3D grid cubes. Six: a cube made of cubes. Seven dimensions: a line made of the new cube of cubes. On and on the mental sequence spun from her mind. Easy. Oh so easy.

  She no longer had to think about the equations that represented the shapes. Merely visualizing the shape brought the corresponding equations to her mind. She didn’t have to solve them; she just knew them. It was beautiful beyond her wildest imaginings.

  A small hand shook Heather out of her musings. She sat up, slipping off her headset.

  “If we don’t leave now, we won’t make it home before dark,” Jennifer urged.

  Heather glanced at her watch. “Wow. You’re right. I was having so much fun I lost track of time.”

  “I have some very interesting stuff to tell you guys too, but tomorrow,” said Jennifer.

  Mark laughed. “It’s going to be interesting comparing notes with my little data-geek sister. I can only imagine the wonders that await us.”

  Heather chuckled as she led the way out. Once again they d
eposited the headsets where they had found them. Somehow, it just felt like where they belonged.

  Pedaling hard to beat the sinking sun, the three teens were silent until they halted outside their houses. Heather waved at her friends as she activated the garage door, sending it rumbling noisily upward on its track. By the time her bike was hanging from its proper hooks, her father had poked his head into the garage, an inquisitive look in his eyes.

  “You sure are huffing and puffing. Did you guys race home or something?”

  Heather followed her dad into the house. “Not really. We had to hustle to make it back by dark.”

  “Good girl. Your mom and I were starting to worry. We don’t like the idea of you kids out after dark, even if you are worldly juniors.”

  At some point during dinner, Heather realized just how physically and mentally tired she was. Thank God they had no weekend homework. Now, as she leaned back from her empty plate and the smell of the apple cinnamon tea wafted up to tickle her nostrils, a warm glow spread through her body.

  Her mother leaned back in her chair. “What’s that smile about?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking how nice it is to be a part of a comfortable family. No matter what, I can come home and know that underneath everything, all is well.”

  Her father laughed. “That’s a good thing, although at your age you hardly have the fate of the world resting on your shoulders.”

  Heather sipped her tea, but the warmth it held just a moment earlier had somehow slipped away.

  15

  God, just let me die, Heather thought. She hugged the sides of the commode, hurling her stomach’s contents into its porcelain interior with such force it splattered her face. If not for the ongoing bout of vomiting, she would have screamed. As it was, she shook so violently she could hardly stay upright over the toilet bowl.