THE STRANDED ONES
Jay B. Gaskill
ireadiwrite Publishing Edition
Copyright © 2009 Jay B. Gaskill
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This ireadiwrite Publishing edition is published by arrangement with Jay B. Gaskill, contact at law@jaygaskill.com
ireadiwrite Publishing - www.ireadiwrite.com
First electronic edition published by ireadiwrite Publishing
Smashwords Edition
The Stranded Ones
ISBN 978-1-926760-15-5
Published in Canada with international distribution.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Christopher Bradford
For
Robyn, my favorite librarian, for putting up with the distractions of a lawyer-writer husband and helping me tighten the narrative;
Michael Crichton, for his scientific curiosity and our conversations about science and fiction at a certain wedding long ago;
the Grand Masters of science fiction who didn’t live to see their new genre break into the mainstream;
and the
cyber-geniuses who made the miracle of a hand-held library possible....
PROLOGUE
THE AUSTRAL-SUMMER ANOMALY
Early February
Near the Ross Ice Shelf
It was high noon on a late summer day in Antarctica, minus 20 degrees Celsius, partly cloudy, winds at 20 kph. The twin engine Dernier, a ski equipped spotter plane, was carrying an extra passenger, Phil O’Neal of the National Geographic, as it tracked the path of the special New Zealand-American team. The hastily assembled group had traveled ten hours across the Ross Ice Shelf on snow machines to reach a spot 296 kilometers from base. Gasoline and supplies had been airdropped a half-click in front of them. From Dernier’s windows, the bright orange containers were scattered below like candy against the monochrome icescape.
A vast steam plume was gouting from a fresh crater in the ice ahead where a very large object had crashed into the Ross Ice Shelf close to the 80th parallel near the border of the Australian and New Zealand claim areas.
As the Dernier banked to the right, O’Neal reached for his camera. The steam plume towered against the chilly blue of the Antarctic sky. Thirty six hours earlier, satellite imagery had captured a huge impact reminiscent of the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia.
This was the spot.
After O’Neal had acquired his first four minutes of high quality images, the Dernier began banking away from the crater, preparing for another pass. Both O’Neal and the pilot were looking out when a sudden white flash engulfed the entire scene below. The searing pulse of light destroyed O’Neal’s retinas, fried the plane’s electronics and blinded the pilot as well. The brilliant flash and telltale mushroom cloud were captured from space at a very low angle by the nearest imaging satellite. Those images would be classified. The next morning a follow up team was sent from McMurdo by helicopter. They found the ice crater, still steaming, the wrecked Dernier and the remains of the ground team not far from the edge. The rescue team conducted a brief inspection and took several radiation readings, all negative. After a flurry of international calls, the incident was officially written off by the US, Australia and New Zealand as two “anomalous meteor impacts”. The suspicious nature of the post-impact explosion was ignored by mutual agreement.
The Antarctic winter soon arrived and a cloak of media silence followed. Public attention was soon diverted by the usual scandals, and the unsatisfactory official explanation stood. The pilot and the members of the New Zealand-American team were quietly written off as dead...as was the National Geographic photographer, Phillip O’Neal.
THE AOTEAROA VISITORS
South Island, New Zealand
A few months later
Professor Harry Tamati first discovered the “Little Ones” on a predawn morning as they were scurrying away from the porch of his summer home in the Alpine foothills on South Island, New Zealand. They clicked when they scurried, looking in the starlight like large, complicated crustaceans; and they carried satchels. He vowed not to tell anyone, of course.
Harry was on sabbatical from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. He was also a Maori Shaman, a fact he’d omitted from his resume and his on-line curriculum vitae for the same reason the he would never go public with his discovery.
This was to be the first of many encounters.
The creatures had “borrowed” a broken pocket watch from the porch a few nights earlier. It had been a gift from a British Colonel to Harry’s great-grandfather, a Maori chief. The watch was 200 years old and Harry had left it on a table, unattended. After all, who ever visits? When the missing timepiece reappeared on the porch two nights ago, in perfect repair, it was accompanied by a note in precise block letters:
PLEASE.
ONE POUND SUGAR.
ONE POUND SALT.
ONE PINT BEER.
Naturally Harry was intrigued. He had put the requested lager, sugar and salt where the returned watch had been deposited. He made it to the porch that pre-dawn morning just in time to see the strange creatures as they scurried into the shadows.
Harry immediately realized the importance of his find, as well as the possible peril to his reputation. He vowed to investigate further, but he would need funding. After making a few discreet inquiries, he was referred to an Australian businessman named Jack Falstaff who came to the scene within the week.
Falstaff was a tall, lean man with a reputation for intrigue, and a gift for the succinct. He seemed unsurprised at Tamati’s account. “Mark my words, Harry. The little buggers will be a gold mine. You take good care of them for me. And, yes, by all means, study them all you want.” Falstaff then swore Harry to absolute secrecy, and put the entire “research project” on a stipend. Harry was to file secret reports monthly and was given an emergency number. Months would go by without any other contact from Mr. Falstaff.
Eventually, professor Tamati learned that his “Little Ones” were stranded space travelers. Trouble followed....
CHAPTER ONE - THE STORY BEGINS IN…
Siberia
Donald Wu was a political fugitive. His picture, a stocky bald man with fierce eyes, was on Wanted bulletins from the Chinese, his own Mongolians, and the governments of four other countries. His were the crimes of disobedience.
He had escaped from his prison cell, with outside help from an Australian entrepreneur. Wu had been trudging through the snow for several hours until he finally located his promised refuge. The log structure was exactly where and as described by his secret liberator, the man from down under, Jack Falstaff.
A low ramp was a disabled access, a later addition to the old structure. It led from the snow to the front door. Curiously, the door was wide open. That was a warning sign but Donald was just too damned tired to care. Moving quickly, he located the promised weapon, a military L-rifle resting in its harness next to a log wall. Donald was fresh out of prison, and he had vowed to himself that he’d never go back in…alive.
Snow had blown in as far as the fireplace. Wu pushed the door closed with his back, favoring his right arm; it had been nearly crushed during his escape. The building, judging from its primitive log and mortar construction, was probably a century old. It had been remodeled inside several times and, except for the snow, appeared well maintained and undamaged.
Working with his left hand, Wu tossed some kindling in the fireplace, trying not to think about the possible broken bones in his right. He pulled the L-rifle from its harness and aimed a pulse at the center of the logs. The fire caught immediately. As the warmth spread through the small living area, Donald took a deep breath and began the search for more fuel. In the main cabin, there was only a bed, a Franklin stove, sink and cupboard, rustic table without cloth, three wooden chairs and an ancient dusty sofa.
No wood. But a ladder led to a loft overhead.
Prickly sensations were beginning to return to his right hand...and his lower arm now hurt with a vengeance. Moving carefully, Donald negotiated the ladder with one hand. At the top he found a small loft where there was another bed, a dresser and a small table. Part of the fireplace chimney filled one corner of the room. No wood here. No surprise, really. The floor plan he had studied before his escape showed a concealed SatCom antenna mounted somewhere below the roof. But the chimney column was much too narrow to accommodate the necessary electronics and power pack. Donald began looking around the tiny loft, noting the location of a small rug on the floor at the very edge of the chimney bricks.
Bending low because of the sloping roof, he pulled the rug aside, revealing a neat circular crack in the floor. Kneeling painfully, he pressed down at the edge. It moved, giving him just enough space to grasp an edge. But the fingers of his right hand were much too swollen to be useful. So he pressed down with a knee and struggled with his left hand until he had opened the tiny cubby.
In the recess he found a single old-fashioned telephone receiver. He picked it up. When he heard a chime, he recited, “This is opening day and I am on schedule. Alpha Zee.” Wu replaced the receiver in its cradle and waited. In a moment, the telephone rang.
“Are you all right, Mr. Wu?” It was Jack Falstaff’s voice.
“A little damaged but functioning. How secure is this line?”
“Class one scramble, but you never know....”
“When will you get here?”
“Depends on the weather.... I’m leaving momentarily.”
“Any wood for the fireplace here?”
“I ordered some. Look around.”
Wu descended the ladder and inspected the cabin more carefully. He found a well-stocked medicine chest over a sink and a box filled with fresh clothes was just inside the small closet. Donald stoked the fire with some dry logs he found under a tarp by the bed then he sat down on a wooden chair. Moving slowly and carefully, he cleaned and dressed his knee wounds in gauze and tape. When the wounds were covered, he pulled on some fresh, dry jeans and a heavy flannel shirt, taking care not to disturb his swollen right arm and hand. He also found several pairs of heavy dry socks but no boots. Wu pulled the plastic outer boots he’d stolen in his escape over two layers of new wool socks.
The carry sack attached to the L-rifle harness contained a fresh charge pack for the weapon. Better reload now than under duress, Wu thought. He shoved a fresh charge into the chamber.
Donald’s right hand was still fat and discolored, but sensation was returning and there were no signs of blackness...yet. Maybe he would get to keep it.
He then took three pain pills, ate a candy bar and swilled a box of juice, all from the medicine chest. Then he propped himself up on the bed, facing the entrance, the charged L-rifle at his side. Just as he allowed his eyelids to close, he picked up the sound of an approaching electric powered vehicle. Wu became instantly alert. The sound was just audible over the omnipresent wind.
Wu heard the muffled whir of a small electric motor, then a sharp knock at the door. Falstaff? Wu made no effort to rise, but let his left hand grip the edge of the weapon. He shouted, “Who is it?”
“Jack Falstaff sent me.” Before Wu could reply, the door opened, exposing a man of indeterminate age with a pale, bland face. He was sitting in an oversized, powered wheel chair. The chair immediately whirred into the cabin. “Are you Mr. Wu? I am to give you a lift.” The words emanated from a hidden speaker, as if the man were a ventriloquist. The speech cadence was strange, betraying a faint, unidentifiable accent, the voice edgy and androgynous.
“Pardon me?” Wu was sharply alert.
“Jack Falstaff sent me,” the man repeated. “I am supposed to pick you up.” His expression hadn’t changed.
“I need to see your identification.”
“I am supposed to pick you up.” The man spoke with metronomic precision as the wheelchair continued its inexorable roll towards Wu’s bed.
“How do you plan to accomplish that, exactly?” Donald’s fingers slipped into the trigger guard of the L-rifle and his grip tightened. The wheelchair man’s eyes were glassy and expressionless. His face was perfectly unblemished. Every hair was in perfect place, yet his body was oddly proportioned. Wu now noticed something else. The man’s legs were dramatically foreshortened, like a little boy’s, but with adult sized feet. Suddenly Donald felt cold. “Stay right there!”
But the chair still rolled to the foot of Wu’s bed, and wheelchair man began to elevate as if something underneath the seat was rising up. Just as a metal appendage snaked out from under the wheels of the chair, Donald snatched the L-rifle, took dead aim and pulled the trigger. No charge! Fighting panic, he jumped off the edge of the bed, holding the rifle under his bad arm while he pulled on the capsule eject lever. Idiot! He had inserted it backwards. Donald reversed polarity and jammed the charge capsule back into the power chamber.
Wu’s next shot went clear through the man’s chest. But the chair backed and turned toward him as if nothing had happened.
Need to recharge! The L-rifle and its charges had probably been at 7 below zero for weeks, greatly slowing the recovery time between shots.
Wu stood next to the bed, his back against the wall. He was cornered. Pulse pounded in Wu’s head as he waited for the green recharge light. In between beats, three things took place, almost simultaneously. He noticed for the first time that a separate appendage had emerged from the man’s torso, a metal tentacle. It was holding a small, deadly looking weapon, pointed directly at him. Wu immediately pulled the trigger.
When fully charged, a pulse from an L-rifle could melt steel. This time, Wu was lucky. A bright, hot pulse lanced at a downward angle, burning a hole through the man-figure’s lower torso and into the chair structure itself.
The chair immediately began whirring and clanking like broken clock. Both metal tentacles began moving wildly side to side, one still grasping the weapon. The chair was bleeding smoke and the man-thing was lolling to one side, hanging like a discarded doll. Yet the whole apparatus continued to move forward, as if on autopilot. The little weapon fired twice, making two smoldering holes in the wall a meter to Wu’s left.
Donald delivered his next shot directly into the center mass of the wheelchair. The L-rifle discharge burned a splattered metal track in the chair. A dense black cloud snaked through the opening. The entire faux human figure sagged as though its inner substance had turned to jelly. The “face” and “head” emptied and flopped like an evacuated rubber ball and several slimy excrescences emerged from under the chair plopping on the floor.
The slimy runners began heading directly for Wu’s feet. Having squirmed out from under the seat, they were crawling along the floor toward him with startling speed. Donald jumped to the side, firing directly into the disgusting things. For a beat, nothing seemed to happen. Then they caught fire with an audible whoosh and unnaturally bright flames writhed around them. A split second later, with a second whoosh, a blue flash shot back to the chair itself. There was a shuddering, muffled explosion and the wheelchair became completely engulfed in an expanding cloud of oily black smoke.
The smell was overpowering. Wu stumbled out of the cabin, choking, his eyes stinging. An ominous vehicle at the bottom of the ramp began climbing towards him. Donald was nearly blind from the tears and smoke but he instinctively fired dead center into the machine. He fired again and again, not caring whether the charge recycle had finally reached military specs. But sparks and flames immediately erupted from the vehicle, popping and hissing. Trails of smoke began snaking skyward from under its cowling.
Thank God that damnable thing came without reinforcements, Wu thought. He plumped down in the snow next to the chimney, just out of the smoke, too dizzy and sick to move. Eventually Wu leaned back against the bricks and closed his eyes. He would just wait a few minutes for the air to clear.
___
“Mr. Wu, I presume?”
Donald awoke with a start. Through acid tears, he could see a tall man peering down on him.
Thank God...no wheel chair.... Jack Falstaff?
Donald blinked away the blurriness and took a moment to study his rescuer. Falstaff was bulky in the chest, but otherwise slender in the sense that a cable is slender. For the moment, the man’s long, homely features concealed an irrepressible humor. His eyes were hidden behind very dark photochromic glasses and his face was grim as a tombstone.
“Yes, sir,” Donald croaked. Then his new boss grinned and held out a hand.
“I’m the same Jack Falstaff you’ve been dealing with,” he said. “Good to see that you survived.” Wu reached up with his left hand. Before he could speak, he was pulled roughly to his feet. “Looks like you had a rough go.”
Wu brushed off the snow. “It was such a lovely cabin until that...thing...rode in. I’ll never trust a wheelchair man again!”
Falstaff silently looked over the disabled snow vehicle and surveyed the mess inside the cabin. A moment later he emerged from the little building, shaking his head in disgust. “Someone ratted on us.”
Donald was too tired and angry to detail his darkest suspicions. He managed just three words: “We were betrayed.”
“Probably a guard on the take.... They are corrupt to the core at that prison. Doesn’t matter now.... I assume you still want the job?”
“Maybe I’ll post my resume and hang out here waiting for a better offer.”
“Good one. You will be my ‘executive assistant’ for now, closer and more trusted than my own departed mother. She, after all, wouldn’t cover for me.” Falstaff took off his glasses and gave Donald Wu a candid stare, barely concealing his amusement.
“You won’t regret it.”
“Donald, you have one virtue I prize above many.”
“What’s that?”
“You are bloody lucky.”
“If this was bloody good luck, save me the bad....”
Jack grinned. “I think you and I will get along well. In the meantime, I should warn you: I would never have hired you if I entertained even the tiniest suspicion that you are less than completely trustworthy.”
“Thank you.”
“Hold onto your gratitude. You have to live up to your reputation with me. I never confuse a resume with reality. Your track record with me is all that counts...and it starts now.”
“Understood.”
“But do you understand the nature of my business?”
“You buy and sell that which officially does not exist.”
“Well put. That and the related endeavors.... Here is your first loyalty test: That creature inside does not exist. This encounter did not happen. Are we clear?”
“Very. I have a question about what just did not happen.”
“Try me.”
“That thing was a bad imitation of a man on a wheelchair. You just called it a ‘creature’. So what was it - this creature that does not exist?”
“...A bad imitation? It was probably one of the older models.”
“An older model of what?”
“I have picked up some strange and resourceful enemies. They are now your enemies as well. As you can see, they have taken advantage of the deference we show the disabled.”
“Hah! Coddle the disabled in Siberia? Not a chance....”
“Your wheelchair creature had probably reached the bottom of the pecking order. I’m not surprised they don’t waste the newer models out here.”
“Who are these enemies? Have you seen these ‘newer models’ disguises? Can they actually pass for real people?”
“I have. And yes, they really can. You can have an ordinary conversation, and never catch on. I’ve even taken one to lunch.”
“That must have been fun.”
“It was a business lunch. I made a deal I now regret. By the way, I brought a dog to that lunch. Canines can always smell them.”
“But you knew going in?”
“I suspected going in, and knew coming out.”
“Do all dogs react?”
“Cadaver dogs do better. Sometimes we can smell them, too...because their life-support units occasionally leak. The odor is unforgettable. Think of rotten eggs and burning brake lining.”
“I thought I’d seen everything by now, but slimy, stinky sea creatures, hiding in wheelchairs?”
“Not from the sea….” Jack pointed a long finger at the clouds.
Wu didn’t miss a beat. “Oh. Slimy ET’s hiding in wheelchairs…using Disney animatronic cripples for cover.”
After Jack Falstaff stopped laughing, he slapped Donald Wu on the back. “Good one, Donald. You’ll do just fine.” Then his expression suddenly became serious. “From now on, my only name is Jack Falstaff and I am a simple businessman from Perth, Australia. Anything you may or may not have heard to the contrary is…inoperative. Understood?”
“Jack Falstaff.... No aliases. Just an ordinary businessman. No ET creatures. An uneventful outing in the snow. Everybody’s having a good time: Got it.”
Falstaff grinned. “We’ll need to pack up quickly. In a few minutes, that snow machine and this cabin are going to burn very brightly...right down to a fine ash.”
“I have nothing to pack, Boss. Burn away…”
___
An island somewhere in the Pacific, a year later…
Outside, a car door slammed and footsteps crunched on gravel. Finnegan Gael, the famous high risk venture capitalist, had arrived. Wind rustled through the unmarked warehouse as Jack Falstaff crumpled the scratch paper, then let his meeting prep notes flutter into the cane wastebasket by his desk.
A shaft of light from a ceiling vent formed a large illuminated puddle around the meeting area. Jack waited for his guest there, as if on a stage set in a dark theater. His well tanned face and guarded eyes would betray intense concentration, but little else. To Finnegan Gael, Falstaff would first appear as a lanky figure of indeterminate age wearing a tropical shirt…and as someone not to be underestimated.
Falstaff had sought out the man who was approaching on the gravel walkway on the basis of several qualities that he found in himself. Of course, these were qualities he valued only in those he could fully trust. It naturally followed that Finnegan J. Gael was potentially dangerous. But “all life is risk,” as Jack was fond of saying. Besides, there was no other option open to him in the present circumstances. Jack had squandered far too much capital on a risky, very possibly idiotic purchase. The details were far too dangerous to ever talk about. Now he could not go forward without more money. That made Finnegan Gael a necessary partner.
Fortunately Jack had more than his recent purchase to bring to the table. He had acquired several profitable secrets from his “down under” friends and they would be a perfect fit in the growing portfolio of F. J. Gael.
The muffled sound of ocean waves crashing against the docks abruptly sharpened. Sunlight splashed across the wooden floor near the doorway. Falstaff remained seated until Gael became a silhouette. “Over here,” he boomed.
“Jack Falstaff?” The man’s voice echoed in the empty steel building.
“Please come in, Mr. Gael.” Falstaff walked to the doorway, pausing just a fraction of a beat to regard his guest carefully; then he held out his hand and grinned. He saw a round, intelligent face, a polished, tanned forehead, with close cropped white hair around the ears and penetrating, but gentle eyes. F. J. Gael’s grip was immediate and firm. He communicated the solid self confidence of someone who had earned his way through life. It seemed to confirm what Jack knew of Gael’s reputation…a man known for honor and shrewd dealings.
Honor was a value widely ignored in this expedient culture. Jack would have to treat very carefully with this man, because when honor is given, honor is expected in return. He knew from experience that any honorable man willing to take great risks with his own money was as rare as a rainforest in the outback. Jack was withholding some secrets from this man that would never be for sale.
“Please, join me at the desk.” Falstaff pointed to the lighted area in the middle of the warehouse. “We can both sit there and talk.” Gael seemed to hesitate. “I understand that you sometimes deal in the trading and protection of technological information,” Jack said. “It’s my special interest, too.”
“So I’ve heard,” Finnegan said as he walked towards the stage lit area. “That’s why I agreed to meet with you.” F. J. Gael entered the full overhead light; he was dressed in a tropical suit, no tie, no jewelry, not even a watch. When he arrived at the edge of the desk, he stopped, smiled and asked, “What else do you know about me?”
“Just enough to be able to trust you....” Finnegan nodded as if to say, “We’ll see”. “What do you know about me?” Jack asked.
“Our mutual friend, General Blackmore, who served our favorite Prime Minister...”
“Mother Liz?”
“Yes...Australia’s Maggie Thatcher.... Blackmore was very impressed with a conversation you two had in a pub in Sydney a few months ago. He was almost…enthusiastic.”
Falstaff smiled and nodded. “I have a proposal...” He paused, choosing his words with care. “It is a proposal of very long range mutual benefit.” Jack motioned to the worn leather chair facing his desk. “Please, let’s sit down and talk about it.”
When they sat down on opposite sides of Falstaff’s desk, Finnegan held the silence for a moment, looking amiable, but thoughtful. “I came here to listen,” F. J. Gael finally said. He was choosing his words with equal care.
At the end of the conversation a new partnership was formed. The papers that later were to be drawn up for “Gael-Falstaff Enterprises (or GFE, ltd.) were of secondary importance to the two men. The handshake was sufficient.
_____
That night, Jack Falstaff had a dream in which he was floating in space. In his dream, he was jolted by a shrill alarm in his helmet. Because it was a dream, he didn’t question what he was doing floating in the vacuum of space. Jack Falstaff had never been higher than a Lockheed Chrysalis could take him, about 120,000 feet, safe in a comfortable seat, a drink at his side.
In the dream, he was in an acute state of emergency. The “Others” had recovered from the recent attack on the “Little Ones”. In the dream, Jack knew who the Little Ones were, as he did when awake. Jack also knew who the Others were, of their malevolence and dangerousness. And the Others were active again, obviously busy with repairs. His time in short supply, Jack eased his descent pod out of its hole. He guided it as it floated into position, drifting next the immense hull of the larger ship. The tiny pod was a minnow in the shadow of a whale.
And, in the dream, the whale was his ship. His own spaceship. Its silver skin gleamed darkly in the starlight. It was an absurdly large, streamlined shape, fitted for atmosphere landings and takeoffs and deep space. It the starlight the hull was obsidian black, almost invisible in the cone of darkness behind the night-side earth.
Another vessel, the ship of the “Little Ones” was floating somewhere in a lower orbit, momentarily cloaked by the darkness, temporarily protected by the distance and the disabled sensors of the predators he – and they - called the Others.
The wounded predator vessel was an immensely dangerous war machine. In the dream, Jack did not question why he knew any of this. Their still-dangerous warship was tumbling only ten thousand meters away from his position, faintly visible as a dark mass of spider web girders and interconnected cylinders.
Abruptly, soundlessly, the warship of the Others sparkled and became a rotating island of lights. That signaled imminent peril. The Little Ones were only minutes away from target status and Jack, himself, would soon be exposed to the Others’ deadly beam weapons.
As the sun’s corona broke its recurring eclipse, inexorably the ship of the “Little Ones” began emerging from the cone of Earth-cast darkness. Jack stared as the target flashed red, orange, then a searing white. Soon he would be in sunlight, too.
It was such bad timing: The sun was lighting up the targets just as the Others’ weapons systems were powering up. If the Little Ones were lucky, their vessel could still plummet safely into the atmosphere of the blue world far below…to earth, if there was enough time for them.
Jack’s VacSuit was still tethered to his ship, still hidden in the earth’s retreating shadow. The tether reached into an open hold, a cavity visible only as jet black rectangle in the ship’s almost-black skin. The descent pod, Jack’s lifeboat, was a three meter long non-reflective capsule, now drifting free, linked by a single cord fastened to his VacSuit. When Jack’s ship tether decoupled, only his magnetic soles would hold him back.
“Release!” Jack’s command was directed to the on-board computer pilot, using a collimated infrared channel that the Others could not detect. The tether unhooked him and swiftly vanished into the hold. Jack tugged at the pod cord, until his boots broke free of his dream spaceship, and he began drifting. Under him, the bay door swiftly and silently clicked shut. Then a smaller hatch in his descent pod opened for him, lit only by a single red LED. Before Jack could signal “Ready!” his ship had powered up and was receding into the distance. It flashed silver as it entered the sunlight, then swiftly dwindled to an indistinct point...and vanished.
Jack was now quite alone. He would have sighed, but in a sharp panic he realized he was asphyxiating. Where is my oxygen feed? How can this be happening? His chest burned. He began to struggle like a fish on shore.
I am going to die….
Jack woke from his nightmare, gasping for breath. A sense of anoxia lingered and carried the flavor of an again moment, as if this was a perpetually recurring dream. But the sense of deja vu swiftly dissipated. Even as all the details of the dream slipped away, Jack was once again drenched in sweat and again filled with dread and a sense of oppression.
He was still breathing heavily. As his respiration and heartbeat slowed, and before Jack could fully reassure himself, he entertained the terrible thought, typical of all his dreams: What if this dream was a reality? A familiar panic congealed around his heart. Nonsense, he told himself. He was Jack Falstaff, late of Perth, Australia, an entrepreneur, a businessman working on the edge. And he sure as hell hadn’t run out of oxygen.
He had grown up in a station down under and had not traveled at all until he ran away from home at the age of 15. Then it was a series of odd jobs, time studying in Adelaide, followed by more jobs, more study. He hadn’t even traveled to the UK or the states until his late twenties.
But all that changed when he stumbled onto the little aliens and learned of their enemies. He was a skilled trader, and the secrets he acquired, brokered, traded or kept had made him immensely wealthy...until he squandered a fortune on one damned purchase. When, if ever, could he tell Finnegan Gael about that? Not now...not now....
Probably, the oppressive suffocation he felt was the crushing weight of responsibility. Jack blinked in the dark, momentarily confused: Responsibility for what? Jack was an adventurer, a skilled trader in exotic merchandise, not a worrier. What a cocked up, silly business, this dream nonsense! Jack opened a window, raided his refrigerator, then went back to sleep; his dream was soon forgotten.
He awakened at dawn to the sound of the surf outside the window. In spite of the gentle breeze, Jack still felt an unexplained sense of suffocation. And there was a vague teasing at the back of his mind, a sense of something very, very important he had forgotten. These feelings haunted him only for a few seconds, then they, too, vanished with the smell of coffee…
As a child, Jack Falstaff had been warned that his life would be a short, dangerous one. The warning was probably apocryphal, no doubt one of those family legends concocted by bored ancient women. Was it his great, great grandmother? He couldn’t recall. In any case, it was someone who had died shortly after repeating her prediction for the last time…but that was...when? Jack’s head always hurt when he tried to remember too far into the past.
Whatever.... He didn’t believe in superstitious prophesies.
Or dreams….
CHAPTER TWO - THE ENCOUNTER
Chicago
Seven years later
Hugh McCahan closed the door to his offices. He turned to look through the bulletproof glass into the waiting area. McCahan, Springer, and Associates, Industrial Information Security Specialists appeared in gold leaf, while a dim night-light cast a yellow glow across the receptionist’s desk. The reflection of a craggy, angular face, with prominent black eyebrows and a shock of almost neat black hair, looked back. One eyebrow was raised in a characteristic quizzical expression. A moment later McCahan was on the elevator at the end of the carpeted hallway.
McCahan publicly operated at the fringes of the law and privately well outside them, but he and his partner, Lew Springer, were not common criminals. The commercial world had changed radically when Hugh was a young college student. The very notion of intellectual property had been upended, in favor of public ownership for the common good. The law of unintended consequences immediately generated a vast black market in secrets, and a new profession of men and women dedicated to their protection. This had become a profitable career opportunity for Hugh.
In the very first year after the legal status of valuable technological information was thrown into doubt, there erupted a need, and therefore a market, for the services of operatives like McCahan and his old friend Lew Springer. They and hundreds of other men and women traded in useful data, processes and discoveries. It was prohibition all over again and the role of the vice cops was filled by powerful bureaucrats like Commissioner Marius Torque, who with the help of a coterie of armed agents, terrorized research facilities, pharmaceutical makers, laboratories, and new-product industries all over the Western Hemisphere. Torque operated from an inconspicuous office building in Denver, Colorado.
Hugh took the depredations of Commissioner Torque and his ilk in stride, often with characteristic black humor. “You know what, Lew? That little jerk Torque is our rainmaker.” Of course Hugh hardly thought of himself as a moralist, but he was as true to his own personal code as any sworn cleric was to “the word.” Unlike many in the latter category, however, his code was founded on the fierce protection of his little circle of friends, a militancy leavened by rough kindness, and humor...and a dedication to the human creative spirit.
Outside, the street lamps had begun to glow, tires hissed in the wet streets, and a heavy snow had begun to descend. The parking garage was a block away. McCahan pulled up his overcoat collar. He said he was in the “information business”. He and Springer were private spooks in an era where the overturn of all patent laws made secrecy as much a commodity as the inventions themselves.
So when he saw the homeless man in an alcove, a sealed entrance to a little used warehouse, his first reaction was suspicion. Then he relaxed. In fact, McCahan had walked by the same man for weeks, pausing occasionally only to drop a coin into a cardboard box. But this one evening, McCahan did something different. Maybe it was the incoming blizzard, the flickering light of the man’s miniature stove in the dark corner; maybe it was the dignity of the hunched form, the glazed stare of a blind man. For whatever reason, this night McCahan stopped.
The man’s half gloved hands were cupped around the tiny flame. Propped against the cardboard donation box was a small, hand lettered sign. “Blind and abandoned by my government.”
“How you doin’?” McCahan asked.
“I saw once,” the man said, “...like you.” McCahan dropped a bill into the box.
“That was a ten,” he said.
“I saw it, you know,” he said.
“The ten?”
“Not that. Not now. I was there.” The man was extravagantly bearded, a shaggy presence in a torn, black-leather duster. A dead pipe was clenched deep in the beard from which his words, somehow, had emerged without a hint of movement.
“You saw what? Where?”
“The Antarctic. The crash.” McCahan stopped, turning his car keys over and over. “I was in Polar Six, a German plane temporarily at McMurdo. We were supporting the New Zealand-American ice team.”
McCahan pocketed his keys. “What is your name?”
“That’s all you get for a ten.” A yellow smile appeared in the beard; then the teeth disappeared.
McCahan looked at his watch. “I’ll buy you a hot dinner at the deli around the corner. Anything you’d like.”
The smile returned. With practiced efficiency, the small stove was extinguished, set to cool on the wet pavement; and everything else was scooped up and dropped into a giant duffel bag, quickly zipped closed. “Okay,” the man said, standing slowly. “O’Neal, Phillip G. O’Neal,” he said, holding out his hand in the general direction of McCahan’s voice.
“Hugh,” McCahan said, shaking the man’s hand. “Hugh…Smith. Do you really live on the street?”
“I have a cot in a warehouse nearby.”
“Ready?” The man named Phil held Hugh’s right arm with one hand, gripping the duffel in the other. That grip was surprisingly strong.
Ten minutes later, coffee arrived at the table in Scholis’ Deli. “So what is so interesting to you about my story?” Phil asked. “This was six or seven years ago.”
“I’m interested only if it’s true,” Hugh said. “Is it?”
“Corned beef hash, extra eggs over easy, potatoes, toast, orange juice and milk.”
“Done.”
“Oh, it’s true all right. I was a videographer assigned by National Geographic to stay at McMurdo Station that summer. When we heard about the crash, I talked my way aboard the spotter plane. It belonged to AWI, a German foundation. I think the plane was normally at Neumayer, the German station. A really neat, older airplane. A Dernier, if I remember. Twin engine, self de-icing, fitted with skis, range over 3 thousand kilometers, speed over 350 clicks per hour. That speed saved my life. We left after the team did, you see. We passed them, dropped supplies near the crash site then circled while they arrived.”
The food was laid out on the table and the conversation stalled for the next few minutes. McCahan watched in awe as the wiry figure shoveled enough food for two men into a hole in his beard. The man finally slowed down. Watching silently, McCahan took another sip of his coffee.
“So, Phil.... What did you see?”
There was a pause while Phil ceremoniously wiped his beard, his hands, and the backs of his ears with several paper napkins.
“At the crash site there was a huge crater in the ice. I think this was still the Ross Ice Shelf, although it looked to me like we were getting close to the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.” He burped. “That was really good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Go on.”
“Right. Water was boiling in the middle of the crater. Like some soup pot, I swear. The hole was maybe three clicks across. Ice was cracked all around it. There we were, flying over a lake of overheated water, and the temp on the Shelf there was well below freezing.”
“Did you see the team?”
“Sure. They were less than a click away when we circled for the last time before we left. That’s what saved me when it blew.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s as far as I go.” Yellow smile.
Hugh was hooked. “How much?”
“Fifty.”
McCahan shook his head and handed over two twenties and two fives. Phil’s hands groped, fastening on the bills. McCahan gently held the man’s arm. “Yours to keep after we leave, okay?”
“Fine,” Phil said, relaxing his fierce grip on the money. “We headed away from the crater, at an angle. I looked back through one of the side windows, trying for a picture. I swear I saw silver objects, like self-propelled pods of some kind, launched from inside the ice crater and taking off in all directions. Not something you expect to see coming out of a meteor crater.”
“Did you record this?”
“Oh yeah, in high resolution. I kept shouting to the pilot in English. “Danger! Get out!” Some very bad shit was going down. I was sure of it. We both were. So he – the pilot, Allan Kratz, I think...gained airspeed by diving at full throttle. Then I lost sight of the crater. Maybe ninety seconds later there was the flash. I could feel my face burn. A complete white out. Then nothing. I never saw another damn thing.”
“But you are here.”
Phil nodded. “The shock wave hit us a few seconds later. I was so disoriented, I couldn’t tell you if we were upside down or what. That’s the last thing I remember, until I was in a hospital. I kept asking them to turn on the lights. Funny, huh.”
“Who saved you?”
“No idea. I first woke up in a body cast in a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand. Later I was sent to Melbourne, Australia.”
“What did they tell you?”
“The Kiwis were nice. They said it was probably a nuke, that the pilot was pulled from the plane dead, neck broken and that I was in shock and acute hypothermia, concussion, broken ribs, collar bone, arms and legs. And, of course, blind.”
“But you lived through a huge blast.”
“Yes. Just like the guys in the Enola Gay.”
“You’re saying it was nuclear?”
“I have no idea. But what else could it have been? Of course we were closer than the guys who dropped Fat Boy. But this was smaller and cleaner. The Kiwi’s thought there was probably less damage from the explosion because the detonation was mostly below the ice, and the worst of the heat was deflected by the rear of the plane.”
“Did the people in New Zealand say it was a nuke?”
“They didn’t really know, of course, but there was talk.”
“What else did they tell you?”
“Nothing. After I was moved, both the Aussies and the Americans questioned me over and over about the pods; then they swore me to secrecy. The Geographic paid my contract, medical expenses and flew me back home to New Jersey.”
“So why are you here?”
“They wouldn’t leave me alone. FBI agents kept bugging me, reminding me of confidentiality. I got mad. Eventually, I made quite a scene on the streets. So…I decided to change my name and come to Chicago because my widowed sister-in-law was here.”
“Where is she now?”
“She left for Florida”
“Aren’t you taking a chance telling me this?”
“Hey, I’m a ‘nobody’, and this is old news. Besides, the Australian government knows the whole story, I’m sure.”
“Right.” Hugh pressed bills into the man’s hand. “I’ve got the check.” He stood. “More coffee here,” he said. “Anything else to eat or drink?” Phil shook his head. “Got to go,” Hugh said.
As McCahan turned to leave, Phil cleared his throat. “One more thing,” Phil said. “For free....” McCahan came back to the table. Phil motioned and Hugh leaned down. Into his ear, Phil whispered, “I had a friend in the New Jersey Bureau. There is a black federal archive there...warehouse in Jersey. Some stuff is hidden there...well guarded.”
“Something about the crash?”
“Yup.” Phil nodded meaningfully.
Hugh concluded that the man was at least a very good story teller. He stood again. “Good luck,” he said.
“That’s what I was told anyway.” Phil motioned for Hugh to come closer. McCahan leaned down again. “Warehouse Number 25,” O’Neal whispered.
As Hugh reached the door, Phil shouted, “Don’t forget!”
“I won’t....” Outside, Hugh stopped in the falling snow to look back in the Deli window. Phil had resumed slurping coffee, holding the cup steady with both gloved hands. McCahan shrugged and headed for his parking garage.
___
A week later, in an idle moment at the office, Hugh ran a search. It turned out that there really was a Phillip O’Neal who actually had contracted out as a free-lance photographer, with work published by the National Geographic. The AWI Foundation really did own a small fleet of Dernier 228’s, one of which crashed near McMurdo at about the right time. O’Neal had dropped from sight seven years earlier, which correlated with the time of an “anomalous large meteor impact” in Antarctica.
Hugh hit his intercom button. “Lew,” he said, “I’ve got a story to share.”
Lew Springer, former British Special Forces Colonel, then Australian military attaché and mercenary, was a mountain of a man with a shiny pate and an impressive handlebar mustache. He flopped into McCahan’s guest chair and listened intently for several minutes. He paused, his face furrowed in concentration. “Hugh, actually I’ve heard rumors about this Antarctic thing. ...But not of this Mystery Warehouse 25. And not a word about the missiles or pods this O’Neal bloke described to you. I have some sources. Let me look into it a little. It’s very, very interesting don’t you think?”
“Oh, yeah.... I think I’ll have another talk with Mr. O’Neal.”
Hugh immediately pulled on his overcoat and walked over to the alcove where he had first spotted the homeless man. Not a trace. Next he checked with the deli about the homeless guy he’d treated to a hot meal. The manager, an elderly man in a soiled white shirt, emerged from the kitchen. “I was sort of wondering if you might come back. He was a regular around here. We gave him leftovers from time to time. He was very polite. Phil, you say? We knew him as George.”
“Where is he?” Hugh asked.
“You bought him his last meal. Heart attack, I guess.” Hugh suddenly felt sick. “You never know about these people. He was nice enough, though.”
Hugh simply nodded and walked slowly away, shaking his head. “Thank you,” he managed to say.
___
Springer popped into Hugh’s office the next morning, a steaming cup of black tea with milk in his giant hand. “Ready for the rest of the story?” he asked.
“Sure. By the way, O’Neal is dead. What did you turn up?”
“Dead? When?”
“The diner owner said he had a heart attack last week...pretty soon after I saw him, apparently.”
“Too damn bad.... You’re sure it was just a heart attack?”
“I only know what the diner manager told me. Did you find anything interesting?”
“I did. Officially, the Bureau claims to know nothing about O’Neal, which is an obvious lie, say my sources. As for the blast? For a time, an Argentinean missile test was suspected; then somebody floated the story that it was an anomalous meteor that contained traces of fissile material. After that, all the stories went away.”
“That’s it? What about the Warehouse? The escaping missiles or whatever?”
“Not a peep on either. But…there really is a black government records repository in New Jersey. Three warehouses, actually. I can’t tell if one of them was ever designated 25.”
“Anything more?”
“My friends knew nothing about the escaping missile story. They think it must be a fabrication.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That depends on the reliability of your homeless guy. If he was genuine, not some crazy, he was a very important witness.”