Tachyon Web (7 page)

“As far as their language is concerned,” Sammy said, “we have a couple of points in our favor. Before I told you guys about the transmissions, I flipped through a few of their channels and I noticed several languages being spoken. The planet must have still been divided into countries when the nova started up. If we entered a ship, it might not be that unusual that we could not speak the local dialect. Also, I can set
Excalibur
’s computers to decipher the languages. Whoever goes aboard could have a micro-translator implanted in one ear. Whatever was said would be immediately changed into English. This implant could also double as a communicator tied back to
Excalibur
. I’m right, Strem, in assuming your uncle has translators aboard?”

Strem nodded. “With all the different types of people in The Union with whom a trader has to do business, a trader can’t get by without them. So many worlds have developed their own slang.”

Eric was beginning to feel a mildly intoxicating combination of unreality and excitement. They were going to try it – the graviton drive permitting; they couldn’t just glide forever into nothing. “There is an alternative we’re not considering,” he said slowly.

“Yeah,” Jeanie said. “Why don’t we just ask them for some coolant?”

Strem and Cleo laughed. Sammy looked worried. Eric was surprised that it was Sammy who initiated the argument against the idea.

“We can’t do that,” he said seriously. “They would want to know who we were, where we came from,
how
we got here, and how
Excalibur
works. Their propulsion systems are clearly far behind our own. We don’t have that authority or the right to tamper with an alien culture.”

“Damn right,” Strem said. “Sorry, Jeanie, but if they got hold of the graviton and hyper drives, they could make trouble for The Union.”

“They could even shoot at us and damage us and take
Excalibur
,” Cleo put in.

“Why are you all assuming they’re hostile?” Jeanie asked, irritated. “They’re such good-looking people.”

“They’re also desperate people,” Strem snorted. “Imagine, trying to get to the stars in those clunkers.”

Clearly Strem had a different appreciation of the aliens’ efforts, Eris thought. He held his tongue. He didn’t know these beings, other than their beautiful voices. He didn’t want to take the responsibility of handing over advance technology. Besides, if he pushed the issue, the others, except for Jeanie, would just vote him down. There was no reason to take up a losing cause. At least, not right now, anyway.

CHAPTER SIX

The hours of anticipation had passed. The plan was to approach across the charged wake created by the hundreds of ion drives. The turbulence would play havoc with their own failing power, but Sammy felt it offered the best cover from watchful eyes. They also hoped their speed, slow next to a Patrol cruiser but stupendous compared to the fleet, would catch the aliens unaware. It was their intention to sneak in beside a ship along the perimeter of the formation and look for an air lock that wasn’t locked.

They’d been watching a lot of television. The
Kaulikans
– as they referred to themselves – were still an enigma, but Eric had not expected to absorb the soul of an alien culture in a few hours. More and more, he was afraid that if they did get aboard a ship, they’d be spotted by the first person they said hello to (which was, by the way,
boo
in the Kaulikans’ predominant language). Outside work situations the Kaulikans used a multitude of hand gestures to communicate, many quick and intricate; these were not something that could be mastered in a crash course. Thank heavens the aliens had a standard issue of five fingers.

Flipping through the channels, several other social characteristics had struck Eric. The Kaulikans were great lovers of romantic operas – they were
all
exquisite sopranos – specifically, a type where the people in the audience danced while the performers on stage sang. They also appeared a nonviolent race; he hadn’t found a program where one Kaulikan had hit another Kaulikan. Of course, Strem said, it was probably a social taboo to get mad, but they being Earth people and alien to this culture would still have to stay on their guard.

The aliens smiled when they were happy, nodded when they meant yes and shook their heads when they meant no. Although the coincidence raised interesting philosophical implications on the nature of intelligent life everywhere in the universe, they didn’t dwell on them.

Eric and Strem were to be the only ones to enter the ship. Cleo threw a fit at being counted out, but Eric suspected it was more of an act; Sammy was able to pacify her easily. Jeanie wanted no part of the adventure, and it was decided by vote that Sammy was too valuable, with his technical knowledge, to risk. Sammy took the decision quietly, though his disappointment was obvious. The main reason the exploration belonged to Eric and Strem, though, was because they were physically the strongest; they were hoping to come away with twenty gallons of coolant each, and the stuff was heavy. At least along the outer rims of the alien vessels.

The Kaulikans generated their gravity the old-fashioned way – they rotated. On the route in, the two of them were going to carry inflatable containers under their jackets. The return trip, with the bulbous bottles on their backs, was planned to be quick and smooth, and without too many questions.

On the other hand, the question of who was best qualified was meaningless. Eric and Strem were going because they wanted to go, and no one was going to stop them.

The fleet was getting closer, visible out the forward window as a nebulous cloud, approximately twenty million miles distant. Eric studied the holographic image, magnified and adjusted for the Doppler effect, instead of relying upon his naked eye. The craft were all of essentially the same design: three massive silver wheels spaced equally along a gray central shaft that ended in the rear in a huddle of four black domes. On the surface, these domes appeared to generate the purple fountains of charged particles that drove the Kaulikans toward the stars. The flagship at the tip of the fleet was an exception; it had nine wheels and was entirely blue.

“This stuff smells,” Strem complained as Jeanie rubbed her closed-eyed boyfriend’s face with golden oil. Eric had already been oiled and had been pleased to see it was an improvement. He looked like a well-tanned tourist who had just returned from a month on an exotic beach in the center of a globular cluster. The white of his painted eyebrows and eyelashes didn’t look that bad either, though he had yet to try on the curly wig as the white dye on it was still drying.

“Hush, don’t move,” Jeanie said. “The smell goes away when it dries.”

“Then it starts to itch,” Eric muttered.

“Two minutes,” Sammy said. “Start tidying up our loose ends.”

“These lenses are going to look wicked on you guys!” Cleo said, sitting squat on the floor, coloring the contacts. Eric knelt beside her and began collecting pieces of clothing, scissors, tape, brushes – putting them back in Cleo’s suitcase.

“Have you decided where to attach
Excalibur
?” he asked Sammy.

“Yes.” Besides navigating the ship, Sammy was studying a perimeter Kaulikan craft on screen under extreme magnification. “We are going to tuck in the rear wheel. There is a lip along the edge where we should be able to hide.”

“Be sure to put us down with our heads toward the axis,” Eric said. As soon as they were locked onto the rotating structure, they would be under the influence of the Kaulikans’ pseudo gravity, and would hit the ceiling if they didn’t orient themselves properly. Sammy knew that, of course.

“Enough!” Jeanie told Strem, putting down her oil-cloth. She laughed. “You look so cute!”

Strem opened his eyes and immediately strode to his sleeping quarters and a mirror, reappearing a minute later. “Not bad, not bad, probably wouldn’t even get me expelled from school. Where’s the jacket I’m supposed to wear?”

The opants, when turned off, resembled the plain clothes the average Kaulikans appeared to wear while on duty. Yet, Eric was as much concerned about the flaws in their dress as the discrepancies in their voices and skin color. ‘Resembled’ and ‘identical’ were two words with plenty of room in between where suspicions could be raised. What were they going to say if they got caught? Well, you see Mr. Kaulikan, we really did have green eyes but they changed color when we stared at the nova too long...

“Say, ‘I’m from one of the farm worlds,’” Eric told Strem. To the aliens, their ships were worlds. As they had to spend the rest of their lives inside them, it was easy to understand why.

Strem glanced out the window at the purple nebula, which was steadily revolving into tiny individual candle-lights. “
Les kau tee mick
.”

“No, that’s ‘I must be on my way.’”

“It doesn’t matter, Sammy can tell me what to say. Hey, why don’t we just learn the line: ‘I’m deaf, thank you, good-bye.’”

“Because then someone would want to take us to one of their doctors,” Eric said, putting the last of Cleo’s paraphernalia away. “Finished with our eyes?” he asked her.

Cleo held two of the green contacts up to the light. “Perfect.”

“Buckle down, everybody,” Sammy said. “Time to put on the brakes.”

Sammy wisely did not add:
And see if we don’t kill ourselves.

Eric suspected neither of the girls fully realized how dangerous the deceleration would be; they had been far more tense before Jeret’s customs check.

Eric stowed Cleo’s case and took a seat between Strem and Sammy, fastening a crisscrossed elastic belt over his chest. He glanced at Strem and received a golden thumbs up – Jeanie had also oiled their hands – and it seemed somehow extra lucky.

Sammy rolled
Excalibur
until the ship’s nose was pointed toward the nova, then activated the graviton drive. Besides slowing them drastically, the drive would also, theoretically, repel the energy of the Kaulikans’ wide ion train. As the low hum began to shake the ship, changing swiftly into the brief high-pitched whine, Eric noticed nothing different than during their acceleration out of Earth’s orbit. A glance at the control console, however, revealed several additional indicators creeping into the danger zone.

They were now approximately twice the orbit of Pluto from the nova and were able to look at it through unfiltered windows. With added distance, the layers of expelled gas appeared denser, and it was pleasant to imagine they were watching the cooling birth of a super being’s central planet, and not the remains of a mortal’s dead solar system. How often, Eric wondered, were the eyes of the remaining Kaulikans drawn to their own windows, to see what had driven them from home?

Suddenly, a red haze began to blur the nova as a deep but soft drone filled the cabin. Eric did not know if the haze and noise was due to the overloading graviton drive or the impact of the changed particles on the ship’s force field. He hesitated to ask Sammy, who was, to put it mildly, very busy, staring without blinking at the information being fed to him by
Excalibur
’s computers, his two hands instinctively adjusting the controls.

Eric was surprised at himself. He was afraid, but the emotion seemed somehow removed from him perhaps because, if the end came, he would not have a chance to know it. The drone reminded him of the sound of water flushing the hull of a plowing mini-sub, and he thought of the evening he had chased sharks with Strem in the warm sea of Baja, only hours after hearing of Strem’s wild vacation plans. It seemed as though it were years ago.

“How are we doing?” Strem asked quickly.

“If I can answer that question in a moment,” Sammy said, “we’re doing very well indeed.”

A nerve-taunting bell went off, and Cleo and Jeanie let out a cry. Sammy quieted it with the flip of a switch. They were committed. The drone thickened and got louder, becoming harsher, sounding more like the thunder of an approaching storm on an open prairie. The red haze changed to a yellow glare, hurting their eyes. Sammy lowered the shields, but the enforced blindness was dubious comfort. Eric’s chair began to shake violently, and he could feel the vertebrae in his spine rattling. He took a deep breath and didn’t bother to let it go.

“Is the drive overheating?” Strem shouted over the roar.

“No!” Sammy shouted back, “It’s melting!”

Eric heard the crack of sparks and smelled ozone. He wondered for a moment, if it were to end now, what he would miss the most.

There was a horrendous bump, followed by two more murderous blows. They could have been ramming walls of stone. Then the bottom seemed to drop out of
Excalibur
, the computer had automatically given up maintaining the ship’s gravity, no doubt trying to preserve every last morsel of energy.

A tornado swept Eric’s sense of balance, and he felt nauseous. The white wig he was supposed to wear swiped the side of his head. Another bell began to yell, and this time Sammy was unable to reach the switch to turn it off. The thunder swelled to the roar of a volcano, Eric tasted blood in his mouth. He had bitten his tongue, or his lip, or both.

Then the lights went out. Someone screamed.

Then there was nothing. No movement, no sound. Nothing.

The lights came back on.

Eric looked at his friends. They looked at him. Naturally, Strem was the first one to relocate his mouth. His words came out as muffled whispers. Their eardrums were throbbing.

“So I guess we’re still alive,” he said.

Eric smiled and nodded and felt his neck crack. Cleo’s suitcase floated by his head. They were in free fall, and a part of him wanted to fly. Smoke wafted from a minor electrical discharge in the ceiling. The control console was a blanket of red lights. It did not matter. Strem’s guess was right.

Sammy lifted the shields from the windows. All sense of perspective turned inside out. A long curving silver wall now hung above
Excalibur
, which his intellect could only tenuously connect with the tiny objects he had been studying in the holographic cube minutes before. This was the edge of one of the Kaulikans’ ships’ three rotating wheels. A sparkling purple jet fanned out behind them and he felt its warmth in his chest.