“We can’t take any specimens.” Zhdanov continued. “Nor can we allow any of the crew to disembark from the ship unprotected—this planet is entirely contaminated by microbes that are lethal to human beings. I’m afraid we’ve wasted our time. We can’t risk taking anything from this planet. I’m not sure we would be able to decontaminate any of the supplies.”
“Very well,” Kansier nodded. “All squadrons return to the ship. Thank you for the information, Zhdanov. And thank Mathieson for her commendable intuition.”
“Signing off,” Zhdanov said, acknowledging him.
Minutes later, Kansier prepared to return to his quarters and his interrupted sleep when the radar operator on duty suddenly screamed.
“The Charon aliens!” she stammered. “Estimates coming in—they’ve sent out... over eight thousand ships! They’re heading for the planet.”
“Sir, there’s no way we can stem an attack of that force!” Nikolai Kaganov shouted, turning around in his seat.
Dimitriev felt his stomach lurch but calmed himself. Panicking would do them no good. “Sir, we’ve got to send out every available fighter,” he advised.
Kansier nodded. “What are you doing?” he asked, as Dimitriev turned away and headed to the door.
“I’m going with them,” he said decisively and let the door close.
* * * * *
Seconds after the first of the fighters had departed, the blast hit.
The Discovery listed, and for a second, the artificial gravity on board was disrupted. Kansier’s stomach sank suddenly as power was somehow returned to the enigmatic gravity generators.
They’re using our own tactics against us, Kansier reflected, remembering the penetration of Arnaud’s infiltration team in the moments of weakness when the Enlil’s fighters had been drawn out to pick off the troublesome Earth fighters.
But how did they know for certain that the Discovery’s impenetrable electromagnetic and anti-gravitational fields would be similarly disrupted when our own fighters were deployed?
Kansier now understood the aliens’ trap, too late. He could not defend the ground team without sending out more fighters. Even if they understood how to use the Discovery’s weapons, they were in too high an orbit on the other side of the planet and could not target the enemy planes, anyway.
But if the Discovery sent out its fighter planes, they risked another blast from the alien ship. Apparently, they did know how to use their own weapons. Who knew—they might even have planned a similar infiltration, though on a much grander scale than anyone had ever envisioned.
“Tell the squadrons to remain on board,” Kansier bit out the order, aware that he had probably sacrificed the lives of all those outside the ship. He regretted the decision immediately; at the same time he knew that he had to protect those on board.
“Wait until the fighters return to open the Great Bay.” He added. “We can’t risk deactivating the Discovery’s shielding device.” One of the bridge crew half-turned around with a dubious look on his face.
No one could possibly make it back through all that.
* * * * *
Erin saw the swarm of enemy ships approaching them, and her gut clenched. She had stayed with Zhdanov, but all those of her squadron remained silent after hearing Kansier’s last order.
Their helplessness vexed her, and her senses heightened. The whine of the engines faded in her ears as they left the planetary atmosphere, and they were left in that incredible calm with the surreal image of starkly glittering ships noiselessly converging upon them.
Erin saw the first explosion and cried out.
* * * * *
“I don’t understand it—the enemy planes are crashing into each other.” The radar operator didn’t mask the disbelief in her voice. They’re flying around in circles. It looks as if their guidance systems are malfunctioning—”
“Are our fighters affected?” Kansier interrupted.
“Negative. They’re heading back to the ship.”
“Wait as long as possible—then open the Great Bay.” Kansier drew in a deep breath. How on Earth could they have escaped such odds? He wondered if the Discovery had done something to save them, but he could not find an explanation as to why their own ships would not have been crippled by whatever force was crippling the enemy fighters.
He reminded himself to have a chat with the higher powers at work and offer them his gratitude.
* * * * *
High above in Enlil, Sargon received word that his plan had failed. Something or someone had interfered with the fighters’ navigational systems, disrupting their systems with powerful electromagnetic waves.
Alessia, he thought in anger. She protects them from me. But it was too late for him to undo the damage she had done. The Earth ships had already made it to the Selesta safely.
Minutes later, Enlil sped ahead and entered the wormhole. Sargon took a gamble that Alessia would be heading for the lom-vaia planet, though he was confused why she followed the old explorer route instead of engaging her warp engine straight back to the Rigell system. Granted the Tiasennian scientists and Alessia’s new allies would have been affected catastrophically by such a space warp, so that was likely the reason she did not... Couldn’t her power protect them? Or maybe she couldn’t… Bah, I am sure she could leave me behind for good, and yet she tarries…. No matter, why. I will be patient. I will catch her in a moment of weakness.
* * * * *
As the last fighter returned to the ship, another blast hit them. Discovery’s electromagnetic and anti-gravitational shields returned, but the interior systems had gone haywire.
The lights in the Great Cargo Bay went out as the squadrons disembarked. Erin stood near Zhdanov and activated her helmet lamp; soon a flood of lights danced among the assembled crew. The team headed down the interior corridor in the dark, waiting for a response on their wrist communicators. They had reached the third to the last corridor leading to the bridge when a message came through. It had taken a long time in coming, as they walked without the use of the automated walkways.
“Yes, the Earth-installed intercom isn’t functioning,” one of the bridge operators replied to someone else’s question. “We have light, but some kind of alarm is going off. I wouldn’t head to the bridge—the noise in here is unbearable.” Even over the wrist communicators, the sound behind the female operator droned at an uncomfortable level.
“Where do we go?” one of the pilots asked, looking around the company. Erin heard Major Dimitriev’s voice and looked over in the direction the sound had come from. Meanwhile, Zhdanov had taken her arm and led them through the crowd towards him.
“I suggest we head back towards the Great Bay. There’s nothing down here until we hit the crew quarters. Maybe we can wait on board the Stargazer. The systems should be functioning in there, and there might be a few scared people headed that way.”
“Sir,” one of the pilots shouted, and the company turned their heads towards the noise. The flood of light illuminated the area to which the young pilot pointed. He didn’t need to elaborate, for they had all immediately understood.
Beyond the door a dark aperture had appeared. The flood of light traveled past it and down the corridor. Similar darkened doorways continued at even intervals as far as they could see.
The sealed sections of Discovery had opened at last.
* * * * *
Light returned within the hour. The flight squadrons still stood in the corridor when the harsh glare surprised them. After Dimitriev’s signal, Kansier and the others from the bridge as well as Knightwood, Cheung, Koslov, and several other scientists had rendezvoused with them. The team had been deciding whether or not to wait until the lights returned to explore the new sections, if they should explore at all.
No one dared to remove their flightsuits, to even move before the lights returned. They were not even sure that the atmosphere would still support human life. The interior corridors had been exposed to an environment that had not orig
inated on the Earth, that had mingled with the Earth air.
“It’s mildly different, but breathable,” Zhdanov announced with a confused tone of voice. “I hope I’m right,” he offered. He had carried the atmospheric analyzer with him from the shuttle and operated the device as they waited. His verdict did something to calm the tension.
“They sealed sections are still open,” Knightwood shook her head. “Even with the power returned to the ship.” But for once she wasn’t anxious to be first to peer into the exposed corridors. In the recent attack, she had given Zhdanov up for lost. Remembering Cameron’s letter, she had regretted never working things out with Zhdanov. She wasn’t about to lose the opportunity now. Now that he was safe and sound.
“Where do we begin?” Nikolai asked. “There were open passages all the way from here to the bridge. We must have passed a hundred of them.”
“I don’t know. But we’ve got to organize everyone,” Zhdanov replied. “There are a lot of confused people in here. Someone ought to figure out how to fix the Earth intercom and let them know what’s happened.”
“Who’s going to check out the ship?” Nikolai persisted.
“I’m going to lead a small party of volunteers.” Kansier said evenly.
“You can’t go, sir. If something happens to you, who will take command?” Dimitriev stopped him with a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder. Kansier’s eyes widened, as though he would have only taken the gesture from Dimitriev and barely tolerated it at that. “Let me go instead.” Kansier looked into Dimitriev’s face. The younger man’s expression was resolute, his eyes determined.
“All right.” Kansier nodded reluctantly. “Do we have any volunteers?” He asked, but the company hesitated.
“Colonel!” One of the bridge crew, lieutenant Segura interrupted. All eyes turned towards her. “Lieutenant Mathieson just went in by herself.”
Good Lord! Next time, restrain her!, Zhdanov groaned, though he actually had suspected something from her before it had happened this time.
* * * * *
The doorway was in fact another corridor. It branched away into a maze of passageways, but she continued down the main hallway until it opened up into a wider space.
Erin removed her helmet and smelled the cool air. The aroma danced on the verge of her memory.
“What is this place?” she asked aloud.
Suddenly she was home on Earth.
“Erin,” the concerned voice of Major Dimitriev echoed down the passage. Erin heard him but didn’t respond.
The image of Adam Blair was smiling at her from their meal preparation room in their old quarters in the UESRC East Wing. Her father Richard Mathieson stood nearby, checking a monitor for news, while her sister Moira, here only about ten, fixed herself something to drink.
Tears streamed down Erin’s face as she sank to the floor, through the artificial projection of their old leisure room sofa.
“Mother! Father! Moira!” She cried, sobbing for the first time she remembered since she was about six years old.
“Erin!” She felt Scott’s hands settle on her shoulders. “Are you all right?” he asked, then suddenly gasped. He had just noticed their surroundings.
The two of them remained paralyzed, holding on to each other when the others approached. Zhdanov and Knightwood had come after all, followed by most of the old Blue Stripes Sky Hawks team—all of them who had been waiting outside. A few other brave officers had followed, but the moment Erin had disappeared, her old teammates had rallied behind her.
After all, Knightwood thought, if anything on board the Discovery had wanted to harm them, it could have done so long before. Instead, the ship had actually seemed to be protecting them all this time.
Meanwhile the images had changed to project a scene obscure to all but one of them.
Scott’s mother and two sisters were waiting at the door for him in their apartment in Central City. They were going to meet Aleksander Dimitriev, Scott’s father, for a picnic in the rural zone Observation Area; it was the day before his mother and twin sister Katya were killed in the alien raid of that city.
“Mother!” Scott screamed, reaching past Erin for the smiling figure that seemed to look past him as though it waited for some unknown person to appear. The others watched, speechless, as the always composed Co-Captain crumpled to the floor before the power of the image. Then, as he knelt, grasping at the air, another figure, a small, dark-headed girl with bright cobalt eyes and pale features, danced away from the others and called out something; there was a natural grace to her, like a young cub at play, yet there was also a hint of physical frailty in her delicate limbs if not in her manner.
“Katya,” Scott breathed, numbly staring at the image. Unwanted tears coursed down his cheeks as his twin sister listened and brightened, then bounded over to the approaching image of a young boy cast of the same mold, an artificial image reflected in the mirrored walls of the living room just beside the older Scott. Scott turned to the mirror and saw only his younger self in the reflection; though the boy in that image embraced Katya, Scott felt no comforting arms around him here in the present. He felt alone.
Suddenly the holo-field disappeared and left them standing in a large bare room with beautiful coruscated silvery-blue metallic walls.
“A holo-room,” Knightwood breathed, afraid to touch either Scott or Erin, who had been devastated by the images they had seen.
“A horror room is more like it,” Nikolai pronounced, helping Erin to her feet. Scott stood but kept his face turned away.
“It seems to projects memories,” Zhdanov concluded, impressed, but not without cogitating the danger of such a powerful emotional tool.
“Yes—maybe that’s not all,” Knightwood suggested, giving way to another thought. “Give me an image of—a Mediterranean beach—Earth,” she shouted, and within seconds, a tropical paradise surrounded them. She could detect the suggestion of salty air and the smell of fresh fish—but then the feeling and its accompanying images passed. The sound of waves diminished.
“Well, well—Major Dimitriev,” She said, hoping to animate Scott, who was technically in charge in Kansier’s absence.
“Yes, Knightwood.” When Dimitriev turned around, he seemed relatively normal, but for a raw, red quality to his eyes and nose and a subtle note of despondency in his voice.
“A few of the crew went down some of the corridors while you went ahead,” Knightwood continued. “They report passing several rooms like the crew quarters.”
“We aren’t far from the other ship quarters,” Lieutenant Kusao added. “In fact, I’ll wager they connect with this section.” He said, not as affected by the shock of discovering the holo-room. But then he hadn’t witnessed the rematerialization of his own past where it never could have been.
* * * * *
Two days later the scouting parties had explored nearly all of the sections that had been opened in the recent battle, but they soon discovered that they could access far less of the ship than had originally seemed possible. A lot of the sealed doorways turned out to be corridors that intersected the same new areas.
But the shortage of quarter issue had been permanently resolved. More than fifteen thousand empty rooms had been found in the section Erin Mathieson entered alone; Kusao’s prediction that they connected to the already known crew quarters proved correct. The new section had the appearance of never being used, though the crew had no way of verifying their guess, except that unlike the other quarters, they found no momentoes or personal effects in the new sections.
The holo-field generation room, though, was the first one of its kind. Dr. Droessler, the ship’s leading psycho-analyst, at once prescribed relaxation time in the holo-room for those who had fallen prey to a severe form of claustrophobia as a result of their extended confinement in space. Yet he advised others to program the setting for them, so that they were not made homesick as well. Somehow the holo-room knew what they wanted, whether they shouted their request in English, French,
Japanese, Russian, German, Chinese—all of the major cultures on board. It was as if the room concentrated, amplified, and recreated their own efforts of recollection; it seemed the more a person concentrated on their memories, the greater clarity to the illusions.
The crew at once saw the potential of the discovery, and began to show each other their old homes on Earth, their favorite places the others had never been to.
After Kansier’s decision to allow the entire crew to use the room, it soon became clear that a system of organization was necessary, because everybody wanted time in the holo-room. A time of equal duration was scheduled for each person on board, but those who had requested going in large groups were allowed to compile their minutes together, as long as they did so after 0600 hours, when all of the children on board had left school and Dr. Droessler’s patients no longer needed the room. Some of the crew still waited for their assigned time as the exploration continued over the next few weeks. Erin and Ho-ling had joined the scouting parties together during their off-duty hours, but as the signs of danger diminished, the number of volunteers increased by inverse proportions. The last of the sections to be searched were further down into the ship, far below the centrally located crew quarters and bridge, down corridors that led to a section of the ship that was for the most part inaccessible.
“That’s it,” one of the others ahead announced, and Ho-ling turned around to join the group at the last intersection.
“Wait a minute,” Erin motioned her back. “Look—there’s a doorway here—it looks as though it might—” at her touch, the doors slid apart. Ho-ling jumped back, but Erin cautiously entered the room. Strange lights of instrumentation panels cast a pale fluorescence into the small room. Erin heard the noise of the others arriving behind her in the doorway but did not turn around. Something else had caught her attention.
A small sea of slightly opaque, blue-tinted rectangular canisters filled the room in even columns and rows, at a guess about thirty. The lids were clear enough that the contents were visible, obscured only by the crust of an ice-like material along the inside edges.