McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS Page 13

  “We paired ourselves up when we said ‘I do’ to one another. It’s policy for married couples to serve together.”

  “It’s policy out at Brinks. That doesn’t mean that it is policy here on Earth. I was worried that they might pull that ‘needs of the service’ crap and separate us. In fact, they did pull it, didn’t they?”

  “It’s just a couple of weeks. We survived a lot worse getting ready for the jump.”

  “I know, and I don’t ever want to go through that again, Mark. I missed you!”

  “I missed you, too, dear.”

  “Spoken like a man!”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that it didn’t sound sincere!”

  He didn’t answer out loud. Rather, he lifted his hand to her chin — difficult to do considering where her chin was — tilted her head back, and planted a kiss on her lips. It was a long kiss, one that left them both out of breath.

  “Did that sound sincere?”

  “It did,” she sighed. “I guess I was just letting my fears get the better of me.”

  They lay together for a long time without speaking, enjoying the feeling of warm flesh against flesh, synchronized breathing, even hearts beating in concert.

  Finally, Mark lifted his head and craned his neck to get a look at the glowing display of the wall chronometer.

  “What time is it?” Lisa asked.

  “Zero three hundred,” he replied. “We’d better get to sleep. I have a premonition that we’re going to be back in Zurich Terminus in a few hours.”

  She moved a hand to signal with a firm grasp that sleep was not what she had in mind.

  “We can sleep on the plane. Methinks what remains of the rest of the evening would be better spent storing up memories.”

  #

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the admiral predicted, Mark and Lisa’s orders came through while they were having lunch the next day. The short communiqué stated that Lisa was to report to Project Stargate in British Columbia by the first available transportation. Mark’s screen directed him to New Mexico to audit a project specified only by a coded number.

  Having been forewarned, their kit bags were in lockers at Headquarters Station. The trip by bullet car back to Zurich was a bittersweet one, followed by a two hour layover. If anyone found it humorous to watch two Space Navy commanders acting like a pair of lovesick teenagers, they had the good sense to keep their smiles subdued, their eyes averted, and their comments to themselves.

  “I’ll miss you, darling,” Lisa said as she desperately kissed Mark the second time her flight was called.

  “Love you,” he whispered when their lips parted. “Now you’d better hurry.” Gesturing to the new insignia on her shoulders that they had purchased that morning in the Fleet Exchange, he continued. “You don’t want the brass to take away that shiny new set of maple leaves.”

  “Call me!”

  “Once a day. I’ll only be one time zone over.”

  With that, they disentangled themselves and Lisa disappeared through the transfer tube.

  Mark waited another hour for the suborbital to White Sands. Upon arrival, he descended two levels and boarded a bullet car to Albuquerque. A corporal met him and drove him 45 minutes out into the desert.

  “We’re here, sir,” the corporal said as they passed through a final security fence topped with anti-personnel laser pods. The car stopped in front of a low, hexagonal building whose roof was covered in solar collectors.

  “Where is ‘here’, Corporal?”

  “Project H.Q. I’ll deliver your kit bag to your quarters. Mr. Pembroke will see that you get there after your interview.”

  Pembroke was indeed waiting for him. The administrator was a portly, balding man with the air of a bureaucrat. It wasn’t until Mark grasped his hand and looked him in the eye that he decided first impressions might be deceiving.

  “Welcome, Commander. My name is Lee Pembroke. Call me Lee. We just got word you were coming yesterday. If we’d had more time…”

  “Sorry, but I only learned of the assignment last night. I’m Mark Rykand, by the way.”

  “Mind filling me in on your purpose here, Mark? The message said, ‘Prepare for Inspection’ and that was it.”

  “The admiral wanted me to look over your efforts to see if anything strikes me as not quite right.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “For the Sovereignty.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Twice. I was on the team that made first contact and again when we retrieved the planetary database.”

  Pembroke’s eyes widened a bit and he grinned. “I thought the name sounded familiar. You’re that Mark Rykand. Welcome to Trojan Horse. Let’s get you through briefing and settled in your quarters… we had to do some quick shuffling. Housing is pretty tight around here.”

  Mark looked around. “I wouldn’t think this facility large enough to house anywhere near the number of people working here.”

  Pembroke laughed. “This is just the administration complex. Our little town is in the next valley over and the factory is that big box off in the distance,” he said, pointing at the wall behind him to indicate direction.

  He continued: “Director Hardesty is planning a reception at dusk, followed by an informal dinner. You will meet the staff and some of the scientists and artists. We’ll make it an early night; you must be fatigued from your travels.”

  Mark nodded. In truth, his body was still on ship time and the past 48 hours were a bit of a blur… though a pleasant blur. He was also beginning to miss his wife. He suspected that he would miss her a lot more before this assignment was over.

  #

  The housing area gave Mark a feel for the size of the project. A few original dwellings were constructed in the hexagonal style of the admin complex. The rest were domes of modern design in three different sizes. These had been delivered as complete units by air freighter and lowered onto foundations. Mark noticed a crew in the distance pouring more concrete circles onto flat spots carved out of the side of a hill.

  “Where are we going?” Mark asked as the little automated car topped a rise.

  “To your quarters,” Pembroke said. The little autocar switched lanes and turned off onto a winding road leading through the outer ring of domes. The sun had been low in the sky when Mark left Zurich. In New Mexico, it was still early afternoon.

  They pulled up to a dome that was outwardly identical to the others, save for the number 519 above the double-door entrance. Pembroke led him inside.

  The center of the building was a circular atrium with translucent skylights at the apex of the dome. A pair of staircases wound their way to an upper floor walkway around which a row of doorways could be seen. Mark’s quarters were ninety degrees clockwise. Lee led him to the door of his room and handed him his key disk.

  “I’ll leave you now, Commander. The reception is at 18:00 and dinner at 19:30. Dress is casual. I’ll send someone to escort you. In the meantime, we’ll give you some time to get settled in and cleaned up. I’ve got to get back to the office and report to the Director. He is probably hyperventilating about now. It’s truly amazing how fast the rumors fly when High Command orders one to prepare for inspection.”

  #

  Mark’s kit bag was sitting on the bed and it took but a few minutes to hang up his uniforms. He pondered for a moment what his host had meant by ‘casual dress.’ Save for the formal uniform he’d been given at White Sands, the only thing he had with him were the three shipsuits he’d brought down from orbit.

  Having spent most of the past 36 hours awake, he was looking forward to a nap. He kicked off his boots and spread out across the bedspread, and closed his eyes. Despite his body’s need for sleep, his brain proved uncooperative. He couldn’t turn it off. Too much had happened.

  First, there was the sensory shock that always accompanied a return from space. Once one became acclimated to metal ship corridors and canned air, the sights, s
ounds, and smells of Earth were an assault to the senses. It also didn’t help that the events of the previous day (and night) were replaying in his head like a music crystal set on “infinite loop.” After half an hour of trying to sleep, he gave up and decided to take a shower instead.

  Three hours later, rested but still wide awake, he sat in a chair in his cleanest shipsuit and contemplated how best to tackle his orders. How did one ‘inspect’ a secret project? He was still considering his dilemma when someone knocked on his door.

  Rising, he crossed the room and pressed the door control, causing it to slide silently into its recess. Beyond, a young brunette woman in an outfit vaguely Western in design was waiting for him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Commander Rykand?”

  “Mark.”

  “Hello, Mark. I’m Susan Ahrendt. Director Hardesty and Mr. Pembroke asked me to conduct you to the reception.”

  “Excellent! I’m ready to go,” he said. He stepped out onto the walkway, the door closed behind him, and he patted his pocket to make sure he had his key.

  Susan led him out the front door and around a garden laid out in neat rows. The setting sun cast light and azure shadows. She led him along a circular path that threaded its way between adjacent domes.

  “What do you do here, Susan?” he asked.

  “Alien culture specialist,” she replied. “I’m helping to build the fake history of our fake aliens that we’ll be putting into the ships' computers.”

  “Do you like the work?”

  “It’s interesting, I suppose,” she replied. “Kind of like writing a novel. I wonder if we aren’t going a bit overboard. Some of the scientists are downright paranoid about the Broa.”

  “Paranoia is a sign of good mental health when they are actually out to get you,” he said with a laugh. “I only hope they are paranoid enough. What sort of aliens are you inventing?”

  “Brahminians.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “They’re from the Brahmin System, a red giant some fifty light-years from here. Not that we’re putting the location of the star in the database, of course. But that is where we are getting the biologic material with which we’ll salt our ships.”

  Mark nodded. The plan, as he had suggested it on that awful morning after they discovered Sar-say was a Broa, was to release working starships into slave star systems and hope the locals kept them secret from their masters.

  To be convincing, the ships would have to contain biological traces of their builders. Since the Broa had complete genome maps of the members of the two expeditions (including Mark’s own DNA), it would never do to have DNA from Earth discovered aboard the ships. Even cockroach DNA would give the game away.

  The assembly hall was in the largest dome, situated at the center of the concentric rings of dormitories and other buildings. In the few minutes they had been walking, the sun had slipped completely behind the low, rolling hills. Mark stopped to look at the lightshow of golden orange.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Susan asked.

  “Spectacular,” he agreed, “especially after so much time in the Deep Black.”

  “You can blame the dust suspended in the air. We had quite a blow a couple of days ago. That always means a beautiful sunset.”

  After a minute spent admiring the scenery, she asked, “Shall we go in? We don’t want to keep the Director waiting.”

  “After you,” he replied.

  #

  Director Nigel Hardesty was a tall, lanky Brit with an unruly head of sandy hair. He was the sort of scientist-politician Mark recognized.

  Immediately after Susan introduced Mark, he motioned for them to follow. If Hardesty had been ignorant of who Mark was this afternoon, he’d found out a great deal in the last few hours. He led them to a large, pie-shaped room filled with people and gave the crowd a five-minute extemporaneous biography of their guest.

  The reception reminded Mark of what it was about cocktail parties that he didn’t like. Being the guest of honor, he stood in one spot with a drink in his hand, while relays of strangers approached. They introduced themselves, or were introduced by others. Handshakes all around, then a few minutes of small talk… always variations on the same theme. “What did you think of the Broa when you met them?” was the favorite question. Mark patiently explained that he hadn’t seen any Broa other than Sar-Say, and indeed, their prime criterion for choosing worlds to visit was that the overlords were not likely to be in residence. The one time they had come close to meeting the Sovereignty’s masters, they had destroyed a stargate to make good their escape.

  In between inquiries, Director Hardesty did his best to monopolize Mark’s attention. Later, during a lull in the meeting and greeting, he told Mark, “We’ve arranged a tour of the factory when you are ready. Susan will be your guide.”

  “That will be fine. I’d like to borrow that Corporal of yours to drive me into Albuquerque in the morning if it’s convenient. I need a few ground suits in my closet.”

  “Corporal Dennison will pick you up at your quarters at 09:00, if that is agreeable.”

  “Fine. When I get back, I would like access to your progress reports and summaries so I can figure out what I am supposed to be doing here.”

  “No problem, Commander. I’ve arranged for you to have full access to the database and an office in which to work.”

  Dinner was a low-key affair. Mark accompanied Nigel Hardesty, Lee Pembroke, and Susan Ahrendt to the head table along with four other members of the senior staff. He found he was quite hungry. His progress at eating was slowed by the need to regale his tablemates with tales of his adventures. By the time he sat savoring an after-dinner coffee, he decided that he was enjoying himself.

  #

  Chapter Seventeen

  The factory tour took place on Mark’s third day at Trojan Horse. He’d decided to postpone it until he could read the project briefing summary in order to more intelligently ask questions. On his third morning, clad in his new ground clothes, he and Susan Ahrendt climbed into one of the little auto cars and joined the stream of workers headed up the valley to the factory.

  “The whole of the assembly is done in vacuum,” she said as they stood on a catwalk suspended in a glass tube high above an automated factory floor. The aforementioned vacuum was all around them, a fact that made Mark nervous. Apparently, he was the only one. Susan stood relaxed as she gazed at the floor below, where globular ships were scattered about in various states of assembly.

  “To keep the ships pristine?” he asked.

  She nodded. “We have a full decontamination line for the detail parts before they are introduced into Assembly. The various components are small enough and simple enough that we can remove all bio traces. Not so the ships themselves. So we keep them in vacuum, untouched by human hands, to make sure some terrestrial microbe doesn’t stow away in a cranny, to be discovered later by either the recipient species or the Broa.”

  “They’re very small for starships.”

  “They aren’t long range craft. Whoever finds them will think they are auxiliaries of a larger ship. There is room aboard for just four crewmembers, about the minimum number plausible for a ship able to reach the nearest stars. The control couches are designed for beings with six appendages, with an overall length of one meter.”

  “Why so small?”

  “To keep the size of the ships down in order to maximize the number we can haul out to the Sovereignty at one time. Also, the specifications require the ships to fit into the cargo hold of a cruiser for ultimate delivery. The whole thing is just an oversize message probe. In fact, the engines are modified versions of those used in superlight missiles. We chose one meter because the scientists say that is the minimum size an intelligent being is likely to be. I don’t know why they think that.”

  “Something to do with brain size,” Mark replied. “Dr. Bendagar explained it to me once, but I’m afraid I didn’t get a whole lot out of the explanation.”
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br />   Susan laughed. “You sound like me at some of our weekly status meetings. I report on the progress of our fictitious ‘History of Brahmin’ and then sit back and think about something else. That is because the rest of the meeting is conducted in a foreign language; ‘Geek,’ I think they call it.”

  As they watched, an overhead crane moved into position, lifted a half-globe of a ship and shifted it to a separate spot on the assembly floor. As soon as the partial ship stopped oscillating in its cradle, a dozen smaller robots swarmed over it. What they were doing was not obvious from their perch high above.

  “What’s going on there?” Mark asked, pointing to the newly repositioned ship.

  “The Brahminians are traditionalists,” Susan replied. “They use a lot of native wood trim in the control room. That’s the carpentry station.”

  Mark nodded. The primary export of the human colony on Brahmin was the planet’s ‘iron’ wood, which was much more dense than anything found on Earth… the result of the planet’s high concentration of heavy metals. The wood was expensive. More importantly, the environmental conditions that produced it would have the Broa searching for a world markedly different from Earth should one of the Trojan horses ever fall into Broan hands — a statistical certainty considering how many they planned to let loose.

  “And the rest of the equipment?”

  “All suitable for an undersized creature that hails from a planet orbiting a red giant star. The display panels all display a red-shifted color spectrum, but with enough spectral overlap to ensure that whoever salvages the ship will be able to see the screens aren’t blank.”

  “Too bad we can’t provide some short, six-armed corpses to man the derelict,” Mark mused.

  “Yes, it is,” Susan agreed. “However, the animal life on Brahmin never seems to have developed that far and certainly none of them have six appendages. Anything we could fake would be seen for what it was.”