Alien velocity, p.4
Alien Velocity, page 4
The Bluebird had to follow the alien convoy to the planet. Nothing else mattered, if he wanted to stay alive.
Breathless, he powered up the RAM propulsion at the tail, then plotted and keyed in an emergency course. He’d never done it before. In simulation, yes, but never for real. In his eight years of RAM-running, he’d never encountered even a slight mishap in orbit trajectory or otherwise.
“Well I think this qualifies.”
After praying he hadn’t screwed up the calculations, Charlie cleared his throat and fixed his glare on the tiny light-grey convoy inching over the amber planet. He had some catching up to do.
Maybe the farewell isn’t all that is, not yet.
His jaw clenched while he warmed up on the jog spot. In less than a minute, he was running at his most rhythmic and relaxed in years. He didn’t know why. Surely this was the last position from which one would expect to find grace. Survival? Then he realised why, and the whole debacle unravelled, shining at him from all sides.
He was running from death.
For the first time in his life, Charlie Thorpe-Campbell was the underdog.
* * *
The rest of the planetoid appeared so barren, so inhospitable. He course-corrected directly for the shadowy cauliflower covering the northern pole and a large area of the northern hemisphere. He didn’t want to enter the planet’s atmosphere too quickly. He might need to make subtle adjustments to pilot the Bluebird into a safe landing, so he stopped running at around 220 rpm. It was an all-out gamble, of course. Air, gravity, the density of the atmosphere, sustainable supplies of food and water, friendly natives or visitors—all were under chance’s jurisdiction. Yet there was no alternative. Charlie couldn’t shake the idea of his arrival at this deep-space terminus being designated. Of all the infinite possible destinations at the other end of a random wormhole, it was incredibly unlikely one would spit him out so near to so many other vessels in such proximity to this isolated planet.
Where was this? If he had been brought here deliberately—why?
The shapes of spacecraft ranged from cylinders and cubes to mimetic, swan-necked stingrays morphing dazzlingly over the orange surface. The traffic was busy in orbit. What did the occupants look like? What strange technologies were behind the propulsion of their vessels? What methods of communication did they use? How pissed would they be at being yanked away from their business? Were they armed? What would they make of him face to face, and what could they do to get him back home? It occurred to him that, to them, he was an alien here. They’d likely be thinking, Who or what the hell is driving this crude metal heap that runs on leg power and can’t even steer worth a damn?
Charlie cringed when he pictured a hamster on an exercise wheel. That was him in the Bluebird. When the aliens found out, would they keep him in a cage to perform tricks for millions of intergalactic visitors paying three star credits a pop? He snorted a fake laugh and tried to blank out the traffic.
The closer he got to the dark cauliflower, the more certain he was that some sort of a gigantic forest covered the northern hemisphere. Smart call number one. He grinned as the first conical tips of dark blue vegetation shot by outside the window. Then he realised where this was.
“Wait a minute.”
Still in the upper atmosphere! The Bluebird’s nose now had an indigo corona. It was clearly entering a light atmospheric shield over the planet. So, what were plants doing this high? He was miles from the ground, yet here they were, extraordinary trees reaching so tenaciously for sunlight they almost braved space itself. Charlie chewed his lip. If this was what the vegetables had achieved, what about the rest of the world?
The Bluebird sliced through the atmosphere with little more than a shimmy. It nosedived through the citrus sky. Charlie’s gaze grappled with the planet’s surface. Was it a mile away? Fifty miles? He couldn’t tell. There was nothing below for him to recognise, nothing against which to gauge the relative size and distance of the contours. Directly beneath, scrawled purple lines and a number of pale yellow splodges separated the smooth undulations—hills of deep orange bordering the sky-scraping tree. He braced himself at the keypad, ready to switch on the emergency brake thrusters. Just before setting her down, he would need to buck her to the horizontal to avoid a disastrous nose landing. He aimed just short of one of the yellow splodges. This was so he could pick the softest terrain—orange or yellow—and still have enough room to land on either.
Myopia. For all Charlie knew, that was the name of the planet, for that was all he could see, a breathless descent through limbo. Yellow or orange? Still too far to tell. His eyes ached and blurred through his determination to blink sparingly. He had to rub them. When he next looked ahead…glimmers lit the purple lines. Now!
He felt sure he had spotted moving liquid, which meant he was nearing ground level. The emergency brakes kicked in. The impact wrenched him forward. If the artificial gravity field hadn’t automatically spiked to hold him suspended in its grip—a safety protocol—Charlie would have smashed into the nose window at a fatal velocity. Instead, he felt the grind of the thrusters then an invisible, stomach-squeezing vise.
He could hardly breathe. The keypad was now out of his reach. Would the Bluebird slow down in time for the gravity to loosen him? Still too fast! Christ! The purple sliver was indeed a river of some kind, and the orange a range of rocky hills.
“Crap!”
It had to be the yellow. If nothing else, it appeared flat enough to land on. Failing that, the purple river would do. Anything except the piercing orange rocks he was headed for. Christ, the brakes were taking forever. They’d been designed for the vacuum of space, but even so. Moving even a limb in the gravity vise proved hellishly difficult. At least it had braced him for the crash. The orange rocks were now the size of work sheds. He knew he would not slow down in time. The impact would dash the Bluebird to bits. A chill shot through him.
At around five hundred feet, he remembered his wristwatch. Automatic shutdown! Beep. The moment he pressed it, everything died—the gravity revolver, the brakes, the propeller—everything but him. He tumbled toward the nose. After regaining his feet, he frantically pulled himself up the window ledge to the keypad. He pressed the button on his wristwatch to restart the system. Three, two, one…
System Ready appeared on the screen. He planted his forefinger on the key for Hull Nose Thruster then pressed his eyes shut. A split second in freefall stretched into infinity. He prayed the Bluebird had righted herself in time.
The ship’s rear jolted upright. The whole vessel seemed to spin on its end before slapping down, inverted, into a cauldron of oily purple. He didn’t know which way was up. Frothy liquid hissed through a gash in the rear, above the RAM unit. He thought about trying to plug it then realised where he was.
Underwater. How deep?
He raced to the rear access panel, yanked the safety lever through one-eighty degrees then smashed his fist against the button to release the explosive bolt hinges.
Thud! A violet cascade swept the door aside. Panicked, Charlie kept his grasp on the handles over the hatchway. The inrushing water tossed him to the ceiling. He held his breath. In seconds, the Bluebird had completely flooded. The water was warm. It stung his eyes. Probably not drinkable, so he needed to take the Lucozade and blackcurrant—without them, he’d be dead in a few days. He wrenched open the ceiling panel and removed one of the plastic drink containers. It was heavy, so he could only carry one, and this one had more liquid in. Clutching it to his chest, he exhaled a few bubbles and followed the air. He kicked up until he heard a muffled scrape above. At once he felt the weight lift then pour from his head and shoulders. It was cooler up here. He sucked in a massive breath—strange and heady air, but it didn’t strangle him, rather it spread crisply inside, revitalising him. Thank you, God. He inhaled it gluttonously, then rubbed his eyes, spitting the metallic taste of this purple water through flaky lips. It streamed with mucus from his nose. He coughed. His sinuses burned.
New life was no joke.
Treading water bought him a few moments to clear his head. The buoyant container helped keep him afloat. But he was tired and dizzy and he needed dry land. He knew he was not meant for water. While he squinted enough to see waves thumping against a leathery-yellow verge, and the semblance of a solid orange slope rising upward a fair distance beyond, he rejoined the race.
Only this one had a slightly different objective.
Survival, somehow.
Chapter Three
Four suns—one large, three small—fed the planet’s perpetual day. Even though its spin kept one half hidden from the bigger, brighter sun, the other suns enthralled the planet in a constant gloaming. After many fitful hours’ sleep on the riverbank, Charlie rose with a vague determination, his hope and his perspective seesawing over the farthest rocky hills. He had to pick a direction, and the more he studied the horizon, the surer he felt that there were two promising choices.
The first, the giant blue tree covering an area the size of North Africa, was more than a hundred miles away. Vast and dense, its lower branches and leaves drooped to ground like myriad sapphire waterfalls. No sign of the trunk, or the several trunks, supporting this arboreal phenomenon. Charlie guessed that a staggering ecosystem thrived inside, and that the majority of life on the planet existed there. The logical place to visit…if he wanted to find sustenance.
The alternative was intriguing but potentially more frightening. Charlie stood on top of the dusty verge, fists on hips, sparring with the possibilities. Above the western horizon, a solitary silver orb pulsed like a lighthouse in the pale orange sky. Its perfect rhythm told him it was unnatural. He could see nothing else in that direction save a range of deep orange mountains to the right of the orb. But the purple river coursed through that region, and the beacon denoted intelligence—two hints of a civilization.
Then there were the countless spacecraft in orbit. Did they know something he didn’t? What was this planet’s secret? If its inhabitants were truly intelligent, what was the nature of their intelligence? Could Charlie afford to trust a secretive civilization, or more pertinently, could he afford not to?
He kicked the dirt and decided to stay with the river. Somehow, the chance of reaching a civilization, however bizarre, seemed more palatable than braving alien nature. It occurred to him that that was what he was supposed to think, but he also knew a ship in fog must not second-guess a lighthouse.
The tip of the Bluebird’s nose gleamed above the water. When he left it behind, the dried yellow mud gave a little underfoot. It reeked of bad eggs—sulphur. He soon discovered he had a slight advantage over the planet’s gravity. Walking required less muscle power than on Earth, and was more in tune with the lower gravity at the rear of the Bluebird, where he had fallen back to rest between exertions.
This would come in handy if he needed to make a quick getaway. Indeed, his first trial run resulted in a series of powerful bounds. He found that if he kept low, he could reach his top speed and half as much again without much effort. Leaping through the air proved less fruitful. Human leg muscles simply weren’t designed for that. If pushed, his trainers could now clear a clumsy six feet at most. “Stick to running, jerk,” he said, rubbing a sore knee.
Where the river wound sharply to the right to flow downhill a few miles farther on, the yellow banks rose precipitously to form a miniature canyon. Here the purple water underwent a bizarre manipulation. The hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck bristled. The unprecedented effect took place in the middle of the channel, or rather above the channel. The water shot up vertically as two parallel fountains, a few inches apart, only to diverge at about twelve feet and arc apart like the curves of a small letter M. Then, just before touching the surface again, the streams would converge a few inches in midair. It was as though an intense magnetism were shaping a metallic element, moulding the water itself into a magnetic field pattern. The phenomenon wasn’t localised, though. For miles it resembled the parting of the Red Sea, continually, right along the river channel. Its sound never grew louder than a low fizz, a watery whisper to keep him company. He watched it for hours while he walked and sipped at his sports drink.
He arrived at a murky swamp in the yellow crust. Only its darker texture told it apart from the dry bed. As soon as he removed his foot and the sandy porridge tried to suck his trainer down, he knew he was going to have a tough time negotiating it. It covered hundreds of acres on the right-hand bank. To walk around it would be futile.
“Now what?”
He didn’t fancy another dip in the river, not with the magnetic M ready to mangle his molecules or God knew what else.
What if I take a run up and jump the bastard?
Hmm, the canyon was nearly twenty feet wide. With his advantage over gravity, he might make it, but was it worth the risk?
“You bet your arse,” he said. “Time to break another record.” He allowed himself a good thirty feet to accelerate before he leapt and…landed with both feet at once on the far side, allowing the momentum to careen him forward into a commando shoulder roll as he dropped the plastic container. Back on his feet, he threw a fist. “Yeah! Eat that, you son of a bitch!”
While it was drier on this bank, it certainly wasn’t as solid as the other had been during the hike, and he wondered what he’d do if this one turned into a quagmire as well.
Burn that bridge when we come to it. He wiped a little sweat from his brow. The temperature remained balmy even after the giant sun set ahead, leaving its three dim sisters to drag the veil of magic hour over the planet. Ghosted in the pale orange, the swampland, distant mountains and the course of the river appeared tropical, restful, cousins to the cool wonders of Japan. To his right, the stupendous tree blotted out two of the three suns for a while, leaving him with one, a distant yawn of a star. In this light, the tree was utter shadow, a wall blacker than deepest space.
Charlie thought about giving the planet a name. Under the circumstances, he figured it might be prudent, karma and all that. Respect your enemy if you want…He couldn’t remember the rest of Sun Tzu’s bit of wisdom. But whatever secrets this twilight world held, it had at the very least gifted him hope. A gamble. One last turn of a card.
“Planet Baccarat,” he named it, after his favourite game at the casino. “A stitch in time saves nine. I hope.”
But you can win as many rounds as you like and you’ll still be the biggest loser in this house…Sorcha’s quiet, pointed words stabbed him in tender places.
Neo Spitz tonic had bubbled in her glass. Her figure-hugging cocktail dress emitted nano-sparkles in diagonal sequences from low neckline to high hem. She was in an empty salle separate from the main casino. Away from the Sponsor’s Ball. He’d held the expensive event in his Cusco mansion that summer to celebrate his lucrative new deal with Latigo. Two more years of running the Tonne, hiding in plain sight as the sport’s poster boy, opening endless fitness academies, undersea biospheres, off-world colonies, Martian this and Martian that. All keeping him away from home. From Sorcha.
“Why the hell would you say that?” He reached down for the empty roulette table to steady himself. Missed. Staggered into her, spilling her drink over her dress. Laughed at her punch to his arm. Maybe he’d sucked one too many mouthfuls from his Magmalava vitamin pipe—vitamins, yeah, sure.
“I think you’d better get back to your guests.” She turned away in disgust, shrugged out of his attempt at a shoulder massage. “Before they run out of smoke to blow up your ass.”
“What’re you sayin’? That m’ friends can’t really be friends…just ’cause they’re rich? You need to spend less time teaching those illiterate locals, those suck-baits in their…in their crap-shacks. They’re born in dirt, eat dirt, take dirt naps. That’s all they ever know. Jealous, the lot of ’em.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
“Yeah? So why do they idolize me one minute and then burn me in effigy the next, unless they want what I’ve got?”
“Jesus, could you be any more conceited?” She spun round to face him, clasped her hands behind her head, still holding the empty glass against her auburn curls. She opened her mouth to blurt out a shocked laugh. Stopped short. “All this time and you still can’t see past your own two feet, can you? Can’t see what you’re running from, what you’re running for, only that you’re running.” She gazed at him with those famous piercing emerald eyes. “Wow, you really are that shallow.”
He snickered mirthlessly. A defence mechanism. Sorcha had twenty-odd IQ points on him before he was smogged, and she knew how and where to cut him. “Babe, others have tried to get inside my head. They’ve been trying for years. But none of them get it. I run because I have a God-given talent, and it’s—”
“Spare me the sound bites. Please. You run because you’re afraid to look back. Come on, Charlie, how dumb do you think I am? I’ve not lived with you all this time without knowing that much.”
“Oh yeah? So why have you lived with me all this time? If I’m such a piece of crap, why are you still here?” A swell of rage burned his throat. “You money-grubbing… If that’s the only reason—”
“Why, you dirty son of a…” She hurled her glass at him. Missed. It shattered on the edge of the Cydonia Face table.
He stared at her, his mind a blank.
“Get out,” she yelled to the casino manager who’d run in to see what had happened. Charlie had never seen her eyes so wide or so wild. It scared him, like the time in primary school he’d watched his sweet junior class teacher erupt in anger and slap a girl for spreading malicious rumours about her.
Sorcha? Had he done this to his lovely, winsome Sorcha, who spent much of her free time educating underprivileged Amazonian children? Had he made her like this?
