Planet America (32 page)

Hunter just shook his head. "What I found up there is the reason that I revealed to you what I know about the Fourth Empire. The empire is controlled from a planet called Earth. I've been there. It's out on the One-Arm, and a more magical and intriguing place does not exist. But I found evidence, up there, that the original peoples of Earth were taken off their planet and brought here. To the Home Planets. It's the missing clue to all the artifacts the CIA has found. It also means whoever was controlling Earth four thousand years ago created this place out here, and they are still maintaining it.

Tomm and Zarex were visibly shocked.

"Are you saying," Tomm asked him, "that this place, this mighty Earth, center of a huge empire, actually belongs to^"

"The people here," Hunter finished the sentence for him. "Here, and on the other planets I found up there."

Hunter quickly told them about his mission: Finding the Home Planets, weirdly uniform in their orbital proclivities. The heavily engineered local moon. The string of empty sentinels. Then his discovery of Moon 39 and what he'd found while on the ground, especially his viewing of the space launch event detector and the experience inside the mind ring—all except Ashley. And the mysterious blue screen.

"The holo-spy spoke too well," he concluded. "This system is a prison. What she didn't know was, it was built to imprison the people who rightfully own the Earth. And there is an entire space corps sitting out there, guarding it."

"But who are these guards?" Tomm asked. "What is their business in this?"

"That's another thing," Hunter replied. "Equally disturbing. It leads to a strange question."

"Spill, please," Zarex said.

"Brothers, earlier in our journey, you had spoken of the Bad Moon Knights," Hunter said. "How long have they been operating on the Fringe, do you think?"

Both Tomm and Zarex shrugged.

"My dealings with them go back a hundred eighty years," Zarex said. "I'm guessing they've been around at least twice as long. Do you agree, Padre?"

"Three times as long probably," Tomm said. He turned back to Hunter. "Why do you ask, brother?"

Hunter pulled the space knife from his boot pocket and showed it to his friends.

"The Bad Moon Knights?" Tomm said, examining the blade's holo-inscription. "But where did you come upon this?"

Hunter pointed his finger skyward. "Up there," he said. "On Moon 39. The prison garrison is made up of Bad Moon Knights—about a million of them."

Zarex's face almost drained of color. "You mean they followed me all the way out here?"

Hunter shook his head. "Fear not, brother. I think they're up to bigger things this time."

Hunter told them how the BMK equipment on Moon 39, while highly polished and undeniably lethal, was also very, very old. At least by six or seven hundred years. As were the soldiers' uniforms, their base layout. Everything about them screamed mid-6500s.

"That's very odd," Zarex said, settling back down. "As one who has dealt with people trying to resist these savages, I can tell you the BMK is usually very well equipped. Even their prot6g6s have the latest weapons."

"They were known at their beginnings to take on the worst jobs of the Galaxy," Tomm said. "Hence their reputation for sheer brutality. They were also not very expensive in their younger days. They were in it for the cheap thrills, and they weren't too fussy about what mere contract to take. Now they're the biggest outlaw army on the Five-Arm—and probably other places as well."

"Interesting," Zarex said, through a cloud of smoke. "Someone must have hired them to do this job and then stuck them way out here. But who? The villain in your mind ring trip— this Second Empire—are we to assume that it was a predecessor to the one in power now?"

"In some shape or form," Hunter replied. "But my brothers, the Second Empire fell on Earth thousands of years ago. And we know the BMK has not been around for
that
long."

"Someone must have renewed the contract," Tomm said, "and brought the BMK in. But when?"

"And we have an even further problem," Hunter said. "These disruptions that occurred while I was away. I'm sure I was the cause of them, though I'm not sure I know why. My aircraft is based on Time Shifter technology. And I know that shifting time inside something whose time has already been shifted is not a smart thing to do. That's what happened with the missing two seconds Gordon spoke about. That's why I insisted on such an unusual takeoff. But even though I left this planet—and presumably pierced the time bubble—operating my machine still caused these disruptions. Ones much greater than simply losing two seconds of time."

Zarex just shook his head.

"This whole time-space thing confuses me," he confessed. 'Time Shifters. Frozen time. Time bubbles. I just don't understand it."

"Not many people do," Hunter said. "But I think I have a theory about what happened."

"Tell us," Tomm urged him.

Hunter took a healthy slug of his drink now. "Could it be that not just the Home Planets are encased in time bubbles, but the whole system itself?"

Tomm and Zarex considered this for a moment. "Including the sentinel moons?" the priest asked.

"Yes, exactly," Hunter replied. "It's really the only thing that makes sense. I flew two times down here while we were on the lam. That resulted in two seconds of lost time, reversed time, frozen time, whatever you want to call it. But those flights were short, and I didn't come anywhere near full ultraoverdrive."

"Go on," Tomm urged him.

"But what if the entire system was locked in a time bubble? And anytime I go into overdrive, I disrupt it. Back here, out there. Everywhere. It's the only explanation. It also could explain why those BMK troops out there look like throwbacks to the last millennia."

"My God," Tomm whispered. "We know the people down here are stuck in a piece of near-frozen time. But could it be that those dopes up on Moon 39 are, too? And is it possible that they don't know it either?"

Hunter shook his head. "Could it be that they took a contract for this, what? Some nine hundred years ago? And have been living up there ever since, causing havoc when needed, but at the same time unaware that so much time has gone by?"

"It's certainly a clever ploy if you are paying them by the hour," Zarex said.

"But even still," Hunter said. "We know they haven't been out there for the entire four thousand years of this. Someone hired them, and took advantage of them, within this last thousand years. Perhaps just as they'd taken advantage of other earlier armies. That to me means this whole thing is an ongoing enterprise. The BMK are just the lackeys. Whoever wanted to keep the people of this place, America, and all the other planets behind bars is still out there. Or at least they were a thousand years ago."

Hunter needed his drink refilled. He felt like his head was about to pop.

"But, whatever their situation," he began again. "There is one thing we can be sure of. The BMK is just sitting out there, waiting for something to do. And now we know what spurs them into action: spaceflight. So if there is only one way we can help our hosts here, it will be by warning them off any ideas of space travel, lest catastrophe hit this place yet another time."

"Yes, an important point," Tomm said after a long pause. "But a question for you, brother Hunter—possibly unimportant in light of everything else. But I'm a curious man and I've never asked you before: Where did you go in those first two flights after we had split up?"

"Yes, brother," Zarex added. "Why did you feel it was so important that you take to the air, especially since at that time, we had agreed to keep a low profile?"

Hunter felt his heart twist a little more inside his chest.

"Well," he began uneasily, "there was this girl, and—"

But before he could say another word, the doors to the conference room flew open and Gordon hurried in. He was followed by the other six senior agents. They all looked very worried.

"Please don't ask us how," Gordon told them. "But we've heard everything you've been saying. And I'm afraid we have some very disturbing news."

They all gathered in front of the huge screen that dominated one of the blue room's walls.

Gordon pushed a button, and the screen came to life. Suddenly they were looking at a location somewhere out in the American Southwest desert. It seemed to be a base of some sort, extremely isolated and surrounded on all sides by high mountains. It was early morning out there, not yet sunrise. Still in the waning darkness, an unmistakable silhouette could be seen: a rocket standing attached to a launch platform.

Hunter groaned. This vehicle looked older than the tub of bolts he'd seen lift off from Tonk. It was also bigger, fatter, and had the same blunt nose and four fins to stand on. Steam was venting from several places along its fuselage. Technicians could be seen moving like ghosts around the launch pad.

"Next to your presence here, this is one of the best kept secrets on the planet," Gordon told them. "Not even our Vice President knows about it. It's a black program we've been working on for almost fifty years now. It was due for launch within days."

"You mean that thing is operational?" Hunter asked.

Gordon nodded. "We'd hoped for an orbital flight. But there was also a secret option for a lunar mission."

This was not good. If the rocket was allowed to launch, it could trigger an invasion of the Planet America. One that the tiny world couldn't possibly resist for very long.

"You simply can't launch that vehicle," Hunter said finally. "It would have catastrophic consequences."

"I don't need further convincing of that," Gordon said. "After what happened earlier today, I'd just as soon go along with whatever you guys have to say. But, correct me if I'm wrong: If we have been constantly striving for spaceflight, only to be smitten down every time it's in our grasp, wouldn't this also be true for the rest of the planets in this system?"

The spacemen looked on the CIA man with newborn respect. Even though he'd obviously listened in on their private conversation, he was picking up on this new game pretty well.

"Other planets might be close to the level of development you've reached again here," Hunter said. "For all we know, your cultures might all be on a similar track, just as your planets all follow the same orbital plane. There's a chance that one of the other planets is on the verge of spaceflight, just days away as well. Maybe more than one. They aren't aware of all this. They are wide open to being slaughtered."

"We can't stand by and allow such a thing to happen," Tomm added. "No matter what planet it might happen on. We know a terrible secret. As honorable men, we are duty bound to not stay quiet about it."

"But what are you saying exactly?" Gordon asked.

Hunter stared at the big screen for a long time, then told Gordon, "He's saying it's time to meet your neighbors."

17

It took all of forty-eight hours.

The plan was simple. Do a little scanning, a little spying. Identify the
numero uno
leader of each Home Planet, then make contact with them quietly, subtlely. Lay out the Moon 39 situation, show them the evidence, and let them come to the only logical conclusion.

Then came the hard part. Telling them they now had to take a ride to another planet. Some went willingly. Some with great enthusiasm. Some did not. A microburst from any standard ray gun provided enough punch to stun its victim temporarily. For those who went feetfirst, a terrifying interplanetary trip followed.

Hunter had done all the work. He'd traveled to each planet, did the snooping, made the contact. And he did it all at speeds way below full ultraoverdrive and with conventional takeoffs and landings. He caused several massive power blackouts, nevertheless. The public was allowed to believe these were aftereffects of the frightening events earlier in the week. What exactly had happened that day the world shook? Shifts in the planet's crust was the official government line. The best scientists were studying the problem. The President was monitoring the situation personally.

It was now noon on the third day.

Thirty-five guests were seated around the oval table in the CIA's subterranean blue room. Sitting in silence, staring at each other, not quite believing that they were actually there, they were leaders of the Home Planets. They all had at least one thing in common: Until very recently, they had awakened every morning with the unwavering belief that their planet was the only world in the star system, the Galaxy, the Universe. That such a tightly held belief was now hopelessly obsolete had come as a great shock. It takes a while for the psyche to finally give itself over to a new reality. That's why no one in the room was talking.

Still, these thirty-five people could not get away from the fact that they were all related to each other. Some were white, some black, some brown, yellow, tan, olive. Their dress was as varied as their names, their titles, their hairdos. Yet they all looked the same. They moved the same. They thought the same things. And though they were reticent now, there had been enough murmuring for them to realize they had something else in common: They all spoke the same language. The universal tongue of the Galaxy. The mother tongue of Earth.

So they
were
connected.

And they were more than neighbors.

They were family.

Gordon ran the meeting.

Hunter, Tomm, and Zarex sat to his left, the six other CIA chiefs sat to his right. The room was ringed with uniformed CIA guards, but all weapons were kept out of sight. The big wall screen was showing a huge graphic of Moon 39 taken from Hunter's always-on viz flight recorder. It looked dark and sinister.

To begin the meeting, Gordon took a cue from the space travelers. He raised his right hand, palm out, thumb extended. The universal sign of peace in the Galaxy.

"Welcome, friends," he said. "It is my job to tell you why you are all here."

They already knew most of the story, but Gordon went through it again anyway. The discovery of Moon 39. The secrets found locked away in the mountains of the American Southwest. The evidence pointing to Earth's original population being imprisoned here for nearly four thousand years. The faces around the table registered the same emotions all over again: disbelief, denial, anxiety, anger.