Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers (21 page)

Chapter Twelve – Forced Entry

 “...long ago we had medicine men and shamans.
Later still, for both of us, came the alchemists who tried to change one metal
into another. These were replaced by your present day scientists who gain
knowledge through the scientific method. Eight hundred years ago, we too had
our scientists…but in the fullness of time, our scientists were also replaced
by.... You have no word for this yet, however,
the word you have that comes closest is ‘Translators.’ I will try to explain…”

The Loud Named Bugs

Opening Speech, 23
^rd
Amular
Symposium
on Quantum Physics

Source: The Archive

Adamarus, Leewood and Harrington walked quickly towards the
soundproof hatch of the listening chamber. Adamarus said in a shaky but determined
voice, “We must bring Bugs out and get more information.”

Leewood looked over at Adamarus and shook his head, “Good
luck. Before you agreed to meet with them, we had tried just about everything
to get a response from that ship…” He glanced over at Harrington, “Harrington
remembers…and I’ll tell you, some of it was pretty far outside the box—none of
it worked.”

They reached the soundproof hatch – as always, two guards
stood on either side of it. Adamarus turned to Leewood and Harrington, “I want
to break into the dome and then break through the door that leads to their
ship.”

Harrington and Leewood exchanged glances. “Well,” Harrington
said, “we didn’t try that one.”

Adamarus continued, “I’ll need an e-suit and something to cut
through the floor of the room and the door leading to their ship.”

Leewood added, “The environmental suit we can get, but we’ll
also need some sort of airlock.”

The guards were listening and looking at each other, clearly
getting nervous. They reported to a duty officer, and the duty officer reported
to the section chief, and so on up the chain of command, but they did not know
that Commander Leewood, his Presidential Authority increasing his effective
rank, was at the top of that chain. They both moved their shotguns to the ready
position, “Sir, I must advise you that any attempt to damage or…”

Leewood immediately tuned them out, backed away and reached
for his communicator. Quickly he made a short call.

Seconds later the guard’s radio chirped and one of them answered
it. After thirty seconds, the guard said, “Yes sir,” into the radio and turned
it off. He lowered his shotgun. “Sir, how can we assist you?”

---

Adamarus lowered himself into the dome. The first thing he
noticed was the reduced gravity – about fifty percent lower. He was suspended
on a hoist attached to a rope that had been lowered through the round hole that
they had cut into the floor. Inside the environmental suit, his breathing was
loud and all he could hear.

He turned as far as he could and looked around. The side of
the dome behind the room – the part which could never be seen from the
window—held no surprises. It was the same as the rest. Above him the back of
the room could not be seen, but he could just barely make out what looked like
some kind of large protrusions sticking out. He figured these marked the
existence of hinges or some other type of mechanism that opened the back of the
room up.

Within his helmet, projected on the sides of the visor, the
e-suit’s heads-up display told him that the visor was filtering out light that
was too bright for his eyes. It also told him that he was being exposed to
radiation that he could only endure for about one hour.

Obviously, the walls of the listening chamber had been
shielding him from this. A red indicator tracked his radiation exposure. He
wondered how his new immortality would fair against it and decided that he
wouldn’t put it to the test today.

A small airlock had been disassembled to get it through the
hatch to the listening chamber. Then it had been reassembled and attached to
the floor. Inside it, a hand-held cutting laser had cut a round hole in the
floor. During this process, they had hoped that Bugs would come out and save
them the continued effort, but this had not happened.

The hoist Adamarus was standing on, which was attached to the
rope, was powered. He squeezed a lever on the hand grip to go down (or up if
that were needed). He lowered himself to the floor. When the hoist hit the
floor, the noise was deafening inside his suit, but outside, he knew the
thinner atmosphere carried far less sound.

Attached to a utility belt that he wore were two tools: a
hammer and the cutting laser.

His next objective was about a hundred feet away—the two fifty-feet
high and thirty-foot wide doors. Suddenly, looking at them, he began to doubt
the wisdom of his plan. He took a deep breath,
what’s the worst that can
happen?
he thought.

He got off the hoist and walked quickly towards the doors. When
he was still ten feet away, he took out the hammer. As soon as he reached the
doors, he reared the hammer back over his head and swung as hard as he could.

---

Woodworth had joined Leewood and Harrington and all three
watched from the listening chamber’s large window. They were careful not to
talk as the translator would pick it up, translate it, and a deafening screech
would reverberate in the dome which would not be desirable right now.

They watched Adamarus walk to the doors and immediately start
pounding on them with the hammer.

“Knock, knock” Harrington muttered.

Adamarus repeated this several times, paused, then repeated
it several more times. Finally he turned and looked up at them, and even with
the environmental suit, they caught the shrug.

Adamarus put the hammer back in his belt and removed the
cutting laser. He turned it on and they could see the red beam reaching out
half a foot. He seemed to consider the door and where to start cutting. He then
walked a little to the left of the seam where the two doors met. He stood back
and lowered the laser. Just as the red beam touched the surface of the doors,
they flew open, sliding apart with alarming speed, and Adamarus stood there looking
at the lower half of a Loud!

 The Loud had been stretched upward and it was now coming
down screeching! The hole they had cut in the floor allowed the horrible sound
in and they all grabbed their ears.

Woodworth exclaimed, “Shit!”

Through the window they watched as Adamarus fell back into a
sitting position. Then the Loud tilted so the escaping air hit Adamarus,
causing him to slide back across the floor like a rag doll!

Outside the translator screeched translating Woodworth’s
exclamation, ergo ”shit” in the language of the Loud.

Adamarus had slid across the floor and out of view. The
listening chamber’s large viewing window turned inward extending across a
portion of the floor. All three of them ran across the windowed floor and
turned to look back through it so they could see underneath the room. Adamarus
was lying motionless on the floor.

From the translator came the translation of the Loud’s first
screech! “What are you doing?”

They jumped, not expecting the question from the Loud, then
their heads jerked upward towards the translator above the window—the source of
Loud’s words. In their peripheral vision they caught the motion of the Loud
rushing into the dome. Their eyes jumped back to Adamarus lying there helpless.
What they hadn’t seen was that the Loud was also rising up, taking in air
again. Suddenly they noticed a change in the light and instinctively knew that
something was obscuring the window behind them. They turned. The Loud’s head
filled the window and it had its head tilted downward so that its eyes were
looking straight at them. Stunned by this sight, they fell back, all three
falling and landing in a sitting position on the glass! Harrington screamed and
held her hands over her face.

The Loud came down again and screeched, passing under the
room. They raced out onto the glass again to try and see what was happening.
Adamarus was still on the floor, but trying to sit up when the Loud reached him
and blocked their view. In a blur they saw its six large tentacles shoot out
from its sides and reach forward. Then the Loud backed up a little and they
could see that it had all six of its tentacles wrapped around Adamarus and had
lifted him off the floor. He was suspended ten feet in the air.

At that moment the Loud’s last screech was translated. Even
through the translator, the words sounded furious, “You dare disturb us in our
grief!”

The Loud brought Adamarus up and held him before its eyes
looking at him. The Loud’s entire body was shaking almost uncontrollably. Then
the Loud’s tentacles began to squeeze!

---

Adamarus was barely conscious, but he realized that he was
lying on the floor.

The e-suit was no protection against the Loud’s screeches and
his ears were ringing and bleeding.

He tried to sit up, but was grabbed and yanked off the floor.
He was looking up at the Loud when it lifted him to eye level and stared at
him. The Loud was so mad it was shaking! Suddenly the Loud’s tentacles covered
his helmet visor blocking his view. Then something strange happened – the
tentacles began to slide across the visor. A chill ran down Adamarus’ back; the
Loud was tightening its grip. He heard a horrible cracking sound followed by an
even louder crack! Before Adamarus could even consider his predicament, the
e-suit seemed to collapse inward as the visor smashed into his face. The last
thing he heard was the horrible sound of a bone snapping. The last thing he saw
was bright red blood exploding outward—then his world was swallowed up by
blackness.

---

The three of them watched in horror as the Loud squeezed Adamarus
harder and harder. Then, so fast that it was just a blur, the tentacles holding
Adamarus shot upward and back underneath the room. A sound from the airlock
made them whip around in time to see Adamarus being thrown up into the chamber.
He hit the top, then fell limply to the side of the round hole and lay there
motionless.

They dashed over and Leewood hit the switch that closed off
the hole leading to the dome and cycled the air back into the airlock. It only
took a second to cycle the atmosphere—but not the cold. It remained.

As they threw open the hatch and grabbed Adamarus,
condensation formed on the glass and a white mist formed and poured out of the
chamber. As they handled Adamarus, the skin was torn from their hands as it
stuck to the freezing cold exterior of the e-suit. They had to rub away the ice
that had formed on the visor to see Adamarus’ face, but when they did, all they
could see was blood.

The Loud’s screech came again – the airlock hatch covering
the hole blocked some of the sound but not enough. Harrington turned and looked
out the window as Leewood and Woodworth struggled to get Adamarus’ helmet off. The
Loud was heading for the doors. It was leaving!

Its voice issued from the translator, “How dare you! Do not
disturb us in our grief again!”

A rage came over Harrington and she jumped up, clinched her
fists and screamed right back at the Loud. “How dare you tell us a hostile
alien is coming to destroy us and then just…” -- she waved her arms in
frustration, “…walk away!”

Just as the Loud reached the doors, the translator screeched
out Harrington’s words. The Loud entered the opening, but then paused halfway
through it. For a full minute, it remained there unmoving. Harrington tried
desperately to think of something else to say to make it talk to them. She was just
about to tell it that they would keep on ”disturbing” it until it talked to
them when it turned, faced her and rose up sucking in air. It came down
expelling it—making its terrible screech. It was everything Harrington could do
to keep from holding her ears. A moment later, the mechanical voice came from
the translator. “Yes, I think I understand now. But you do not. There is
nothing that can be done. Nothing can stop the thing that approaches. We are
beyond sorrow for this and for the fate of your world.”

Harrington, still angry but also scared, rejected the Loud’s
statement out of hand and hollered back, “Maybe you can do nothing, but we do
not give up so easily!”

The Loud seemed to deflate at her words. After a moment, it
straightened and rose up again. It asked, “Where is Adamarus?”

“Adamarus was inside the environmental suit you were just
tossing about. You may have killed him.” She glanced back at Leewood and
Woodworth. They had the helmet off and had felt for Adamarus’ pulse. Leewood
saw her looking back and gave her a thumbs up to let her know he was still
alive, while Woodworth tried to wipe more of the blood from Adamarus’ face.

“When will you know if I have killed him?” the Loud asked.

Harrington turned back to the Loud. “I have just been told
that he still lives, but may be badly injured and may still die. We do not yet
know.”

“When he can, have him come back to talk with me. If he dies
then you, and only you, come back and tell me.”

Harrington’s rage returned and again she screamed at the Loud,
“No! You will talk now or I will be the next to come to the doors. Then another
and another until you talk to us!”

The Loud again remained still for almost a minute looking at
Harrington. Then it rose up, came down, “Really?”

“Yes, really.” She replied hotly.

Again the Loud went still for many seconds. Then it seemed to
deflate further.

Behind her she could hear Leewood and Woodworth picking up Adamarus.
She started to turn, but Leewood whispered across to her, “We’ll take care of
him. You just try to keep the Loud talking!”

She nodded once and focused on the Loud again. “Are you
Bugs?” she asked.

“I am Bugs.” It answered.