Gridlock and Other Stories Part 30

Lieutenant Harlan Frees had joined the Stellar Survey because he did not relish the thought of taking over the family business in Woomera. The life suited him. To Frees, the opportunity to lead a party aboard the surviving alien craft seemed too good to be true.

"Report, Scout Two," Landon ordered as Frees's command hovered just beyond range of the slowly tumbling alien craft. Immediately afterMagellan had destroyed its tormentor, the large ship had put on a burst of speed to escape the scene of the battle. It had apparently been too much for the craft's tortured engines. Moments later, the squat cylinder had gone ballistic. After checking the point where Scout Three had been destroyed,Magellan went in pursuit.

"She's not human, Captain. No orbital shipyard anywhere near Sol ever built this thing," Frees reported. He had ordered his vessel in as close as he dared. In front of him was a vast gash where one of the warcraft's beams had struck a slashing blow. In the compartment beyond floated a body. It was badly mutilated, but enough survived to know that the being had possessed two arms too many.

"Get a shot of that," he ordered Ensign Grimes, his copilot.

"Yes, sir."

"After you get the body, do a slow pan. Show them the extent of the damage."

"Yes, sir."

While Grimes took care to doc.u.ment the alien ship, Frees looked for a place to dock. The alien ship's slow tumbling motion was a problem. They would have to latch on and use their own drive to halt it before anyone could explore. Otherwise, there was too much risk of an accident.

Frees found what he was looking for and gently nudged the scout forward. He became conscious of a strange stink in the helmet of his vacuum suit, and then realized it was his own fear producing the odor.

He wondered if Grimes smelled the same thing inside his own closed environment.

Scout Two made contact without incident. Two minutes later, they secured their ship to the derelict with a cable. Five minutes after that, they had the tumbling motion halted.

"You have got the conn, Mister," Frees ordered as he unstrapped. "If you see anything other than us moving about in there, blow the explosive bolts and run like h.e.l.l for the ship. Got that?"

"What about you, Lieutenant?"

"Don't mind me or anyone. Anything with four arms comes into view, you get out of here."

"Aye aye, sir."

Frees moved to the after compartment where the rest of his boarding party waited. The three were sealed inside vacuum suits and looked slightly ludicrous with a collection of weapons strapped to theirchests. Firing a gun in microgravity was a tricky business. The recoil could send you caroming off in the wrong direction, not to mention the possibility of a ricochet puncturing a suit. Nevertheless, considering what had happened to Scout Three, the captain had ordered the boarding party armed.

"I'll lead the way," Frees told Able s.p.a.cers Goldstein, Valmoth, and Kurtzkov. "Monitor this frequency and the emergency one at all times. Everyone set?"

He received several clenched fists, the gesture that subst.i.tutes for a nod in a vacuum suit, in response. After checking to see that Grimes was prepared in the c.o.c.kpit, he turned the valve that spilled cabin air directly to s.p.a.ce. This was one time, Frees reasoned, when they might not have time to cycle through the airlock in the normal manner. When both inner and outer doors were latched open, each man floated through the short airlock tunnel and entered the alien ship.

They encountered corridors that were two meters square and lined on two sides with equipment lockers. This confirmed that the ship was designed to be spun to produce artificial gravity. In ships designed for microgravity, the lockers would have covered walls, deck, and overhead. During fifteen minutes spent exploring the dark, they discovered several members of the crew. There were more of the four-armed beings that looked like beetles with fur. Another species had bulging eyes and thin manipulators that seemed to have evolved from something like a lobster's claw. Whether the bulging eyes were natural or the result of explosive decompression was not immediately obvious.

Frees was examining one of the dead when a radio call came echoing to him through the metal corridors. "Come look at this, Lieutenant. We've found a section with air behind it."

"Stand by."

Frees pulled himself hand over hand to where the able s.p.a.cer shone his light on a closed pressure door. The door was similar to that found on a human s.p.a.ceship, although the proportions were different.

So, too, was the control inset in the door's face. It glowed in a script composed primarily of dots and swirls. Kurtzkov braced his legs against a ledge that stuck out into the corridor and tried to lever the door open with his own strength. The hatch did not budge. That was hardly surprising if there were air on the opposite side.

"Are you sure it isn't jammed?" Frees asked as he floated to join the two s.p.a.cers.

"Don't think so, Mr. Frees. None of the other hatches we came through was."

"Right. Valmoth, get back to the ship and break out the portable airlock. We have atmosphere on the other side of this bulkhead."

Rigging the airlock took twenty minutes. The biggest problem was finding a point to anchor the lock in order to control the blow-off load when it was pressurized. The lock was just big enough for two men in vacuum suits. Frees and Kurtzkov crowded together and let the other two seal them in before getting to work on the hatch. A quick flash of light from Kurtzkov's drilling laser and the airlock filled with air.

As soon as his suit collapsed around him, Frees reached out to touch the hatch control. Pressing one contact had no effect. He tried the other. The pressure door swung silently back on its hinges.

Inside, Frees swept his flashlamp around the darkened room. In one corner, a figure lay huddled in a tight ball. At first, Frees thought it another corpse. Only after a moment did he notice the unblinking yellow eyes that stared at him and the quick panting breath.

"Tell the captain that we have a survivor," he told the two s.p.a.cers still in the vacuum portion of theship.

Slowly, carefully, he moved toward the shivering ma.s.s of flesh. The being jumped and whimpered when Frees reached out and touched it on a pointed shoulder. Slowly, gently, Frees and Kurtzkov unrolled it.

"d.a.m.n, Mr. Frees. It's a monkey!"

To Be Continued

AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY.

Michael McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aeros.p.a.ce propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He is currently employed at AlliedSignal Aeros.p.a.ce Company, Tempe, Arizona, where he is a senior engineering manager in the Pneumatic Controls Product Line.

In his career, Mr. McCollum has worked on the precursor to the s.p.a.ce Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, s.p.a.ce Station Freedom, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He is currently involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aeros.p.a.ce engine manufacturer and has traveled extensively to Russia in the last several years.

In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as a.n.a.log Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. His novels (all originally published by Ballantine-Del Rey) include A Greater Infinity ,,Procyon's Promise,Antares Dawn ,Antares Pa.s.sage ,The Clouds of Saturn, and The Sails of Tau Ceti, His novel,Thunderstrike! , was optioned by a Hollywood production company for a possible movie.Several of these books have subsequently been translated into j.a.panese and German.

Mr. McCollum is the proprietor of Sci Fi - Arizona, one of the first author-owned-and-operated virtual bookstores on the INTERNET. He has completed the first book in a series t.i.tledThe Gibraltar Stars Trilogy .Gibraltar Earth was the first original novel published on Sci Fi -Arizona. Mr. McCollum is now working onAntares Victory .

Mr. McCollum is married to a lovely lady named Catherine, and has three children: Robert, Michael, and Elizabeth. Robert is a newly minted engineer, and Michael is studying to be a police officer. Elizabeth is a student at Northern Arizona University, where she is majoring in communications.

A Virtual Science Fiction Bookstore and Writer's Workshop Michael McCollum, Proprietor WWW.SCIFI-AZ.COM.

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Three hundred years after humanity made its deal with the Life Probe to search out the secret of faster-than-light travel, the descendants of the original expedition return to Earth in a starship. They find a world that has forgotten the ancient contract. No matter. The colonists have overcome far greater obstacles in their single-minded drive to redeem a promise made before any of them were born...

3. Antares Dawn - US$4.50 When the supergiant star Antares exploded in 2512, the human colony on Alta found their pathway to the stars gone, isolating them from the rest of human s.p.a.ce for more than a century. Then one day, a powerful warship materialized in the system without warning. Alarmed by the sudden appearance of such a behemoth, the commanders of the Altan s.p.a.ce Navy dispatched one of their most powerful ships to investigate. What ASNS Discovery finds when they finally catch the intruder is a battered hulk manned by a dead crew.

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After more than a century of isolation, the paths between stars are again open and the people of Alta in contact with their sister colony on Sandar. The opening of the foldlines has not been the unmixed blessing the Altans had supposed, however.

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The new comet found near Jupiter was an incredible treasure trove of water ice and rock.

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When the sun flared out of control and boiled Earth's oceans, humanity took refuge in a place that few would have predicted. In the greatest migration in history, the entire human race took up residence among the towering clouds and deep clear-air canyons of Saturn's upper atmosphere. Having survived the traitor star, they returned to the all-too-human tradition of internecine strife. The new city-states of Saturn began to resemble those of ancient Greece, with one group of cities taking on the role of militaristic Sparta ...

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Starhopperwas humanity's first interstellar probe. It was designed to search for intelligent life beyond the solar system. Before it could be launched, however, intelligent life found Earth. The discovery of an alien light sail inbound at the edge of the solar system generated considerable excitement in scientific circles. With the interstellar probe nearing completion, it gave scientists the opportunity to launch an expedition to meet the aliens while they were still in s.p.a.ce. The second surprise came whenStarhopper's crew boarded the alien craft. They found beings that, despite their alien physiques, were surprisingly compatible with humans. That two species so similar could have evolved a mere twelve light years from one another seemed too coincidental to be true.

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It is the 24th Century and humanity is just gaining a toehold out among the stars. Stellar Survey StarshipMagellan is exploring the New Eden system when they encounter two alien s.p.a.cecraft. When the encounter is over, the score is one human scout ship and one alien aggressor destroyed. In exploring the wreck of the second alien ship, s.p.a.cers discover a survivor with a fantastic story.

The alien comes from a million-star Galactic Empire ruled over by a mysterious race known as the Broa. These overlords are the masters of this region of the galaxy and they allow no compet.i.tors. This news presents Earth's rulers with a problem. As yet, the Broa are ignorant of humanity's existence. Does the human race retreat to its one small world, quaking in fear that the Broa will eventually discover Earth?

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