Yondering Page 8

Double Seven Two gave a shrill whistle and other youngsters appeared to challenge the first gang. A fight started, and Double Seven Two hurried him away.

  “Remember who your friends are on pay day,” he said.

  But before then he was summoned to the Job Center mid-shift, his chit taken from him and told to bathe again using plenty of scented soap. He was given a low-grade executive suit and escorted to Pharmacie; except that now the name read Chemarx.

  As he was handed over to a security man he looked back and saw his guide watching, a baffled expression on his face; this was so unexpected that not even Double Seven Two could understand.

  He crossed an artificial garden, wondering: what now? Obviously the takeover bid by their old rivals had succeeded. Had there been a public outcry over Nelson’s death? Were they going to throw him to the media?

  He was shown into a basement room and told, “Wait here for your interview.”

  He waited. Interview? The room held a desk, two chairs, and a thumbprint machine. The door opened and a familiar blonde head appeared. “Elsie!”

  His former secretary wrinkled her nose and withdrew. “It’s Wilton, sir,” she confirmed, and disappeared.

  One glance at the man who stepped into the room told Wilton this was a top executive. A tailored suit of quality covered a well-established paunch.

  “Sit down. I am I. C. Crowder, heading up your old section, for Chemarx.”

  Wilton sat, allowing himself to hope; it could be they needed his expertise.

  “Pharmacie made an error of judgment in not insisting their admen take a basic science course. If you’d known what you were handling, you wouldn’t have made such a gross error.”

  Wilton suppressed his feelings and said earnestly, “I agree, sir.”

  “That’s in the past. What we at Chemarx are about today is a new use for an old drug. We are going to tailor Andiphor to a new end and, of course, give it a new name.” Crowder smiled briefly. “Andiphor is dead, long live Andiphor.” He leaned forward on his desk.

  “The basic fact about anabolic steroids is that they promote the growth of muscles. For an athlete, this means a significant increase in strength and speed. A side effect is that they also increase the hemoglobin content of the blood, and this improves the blood’s ability to deliver oxygen where it is needed—including the brain.”

  Wilton put on an intelligent expression. “The brain? Do athletes need this?”

  Crowder stared at him. “Did I mention athletes? We shall be tailoring this drug to enhance new executives.”

  “A whole new market! All those young execs starting at the bottom, competing to see who can climb the fastest and furthest.” Wilton allowed his enthusiasm to show. “I like it—” His confidence was growing.

  Crowder gave his outburst a cool reception. “I think perhaps you have misunderstood me.” He opened a drawer in the desk and brought out a contract form. “I’ll say it once only: this is a unique opportunity to your immediate advantage.”

  He passed the contract form across the desk and Wilton looked at the form, appalled.

  “You’re a failed executive,” Crowder said. “Just the material we need as a test subject for our redesigned drug. Apt, don’t you think?”

  Tears formed in Wilton’s eyes. His throat was suddenly dry.

  Slowly the new guinea pig extended his thumb.

  OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, by Mark E. Burgess

  Ian Colorado clung to the cliff face a kilometer above the ground, trying not to look down at the bleak terrain spread out far below him. The emerald rock of the giant promontory extended yet another quarter-klick upward before it topped out. He carefully scanned the surface above him for the best route to climb, searching for the finger- and toe-holds that would allow him to ascend another meter, and then another. His ten teammates were fanned out below and to the sides, their environment suits clinging to the sheer face like tiny insects.

  Looming in the sky above the wall was the multihued curve of the gas giant exoplanet called Cancri 4. It covered nearly a quarter of the visible heavens, exotically beautiful with its glowing bands of green, ochre and red. The moon beneath Ian’s feet was one of several satellites orbiting the planet, and it possessed the most human-compatible habitat in the system. That made it the logical choice for the outlaw stronghold sitting atop the promontory that Ian’s company now ascended.

  For the past year he had been tracking down the space pirate known as Mol’Kenar. This entity, thought to be human, was the most feared and sought-after criminal in inhabited space. For the past decade the pirates under Mol’Kenar’s command had preyed with impunity on cargo ships and passenger vessels alike, and when the Planetary Union had tired of waiting for the regular military to provide a solution, they had called Ian. He was a “fixer of problems,” or at least that was as close a description as could be had for what he did; he had no official title. But he was the best human operative in his field, and when an issue was troublesome enough, he was tasked to solve it.

  The Union had made their directive clear: they wanted Mol’Kenar alive if possible. That meant Ian could not simply bring destroyers into near space and bombard the moon until its face was wiped clean. Nor could they easily approach via landers. Stealth probes had clearly showed the bluff’s topside dotted with defensive arrays that would put most Union military bases to shame. That left them doing things the hard way, coming up from below with an elite team that could knock out the defenses, opening the way for a full-scale air assault.

  Ian laboriously worked his way upward one grip at a time. The micrograv units of his suit hummed as they adhered his hands and feet to the copper-rich malachite surface. Even with the suit’s assist, the climb had been long and difficult, and the muscles of his calves and shoulders ached with the strain. Sweat trickled down his back, creating an itch that was all the worse because he had no chance of scratching it. Best to concentrate on the task at hand, releasing one hold, reaching upward, reactivating the grav-grip as he placed his glove back on the rock.

  The yellow orb of 55 Cancri A shone bright in the western sky behind him, casting his bulky shadow against the rock. This star system was a binary; in another few hours the primary sun would set, leaving its red dwarf partner, 55 Cancri B, visible as a bright speck in the northern night sky. The strike team planned to top the bluff around dusk, and make their way to the defensive emplacements under the cover of dark. Then they’d remind these pirate bastards why they should fear the night.

  The wind whistled around him, and his sensors showed the outside temperature to be far below freezing. The atmosphere was breathable, but without his suit’s protection, Ian would have been a frozen corpse within minutes. The profile on this moon hadn’t mentioned temperature extremes; it was just his luck to arrive during a cold snap. Well, he’d gotten used to it by now. When it came to weather, it seemed he and his team had encountered nothing but misfortune in recent years. The missions were tough enough in themselves, but he couldn’t recall the last time he had run a field operation in balmy conditions.

  A high-pitched whirring sounded abruptly behind him, and Ian started, almost losing his grip on the rock face. Heart racing, he twisted his upper body cautiously and turned his head as far around as he could. There, less than a meter away, hovered a Union standard drone. The blue-striped silver orb gleamed where the sun’s rays bounced off its polished surface. As he watched, a small round hatch popped open in the drone’s side, and a black cable snaked out toward him. So that was it, a message was being delivered. Manual connection was inconvenient as hell, but no airwave communications could be risked during a stealth mission. The drone carried a prerecorded message, couched in a sophisticated personality matrix based on the psyche of the sender. It could hold a simple dialogue, closely mimicking the responses of the actual person it represented. After logging the conversation, the device would then retreat to a safe distance and beam the encrypted recording back for the sender to review.

  Ian carefully detached o
ne gloved hand from the cliff and grabbed the cable as it came within reach. Quickly he plugged it into the input jack on his helmet, and then returned his hand to its grip on the rock.

  In a few seconds a virtual image popped up inside his helmet display. What met his eyes caused him to blink in surprise. The graying, solidly-built man staring at him from behind a desk wasn’t Ian’s usual contact. From the emblems on his uniform, what could be seen of them under the proliferation of medals, the man appeared to be a high-ranking general in the Allied Space Forces. This was highly irregular; very few people knew Ian was here outside of special ops. While he was pondering the implications, the frozen image came to life and said, “Ian Colorado, I presume?”

  “Who wants to know?” Ian replied testily. General or not, he wasn’t in the mood for a chat right then, not while hanging off a damned cliff, and not with his objective finally in sight. Nor did he trust this stranger who seemingly knew more than he should.

  “I’m General McAllister, Allied Space Command,” the man answered. Ian felt a twinge of disappointment at the image’s bland expression. That was the problem when dealing with a simulacrum. What good did it do to sound off to a superior if you couldn’t achieve the desired reaction? The general’s likeness continued in a measured voice, “Sorry for the intrusion. I’ve been authorized to request your presence at once.”

  “What?” Ian was flabbergasted. “Do you have any idea who we’re closing in on here?”

  “Mol’Kenar, as I understand it,” the general replied levelly. “Forget him. We need you here. Now.”

  Ian couldn’t believe his ears. The target was highly classified, and also had been a top priority of the Planetary Union for most of the past decade. What could take precedence over this mission?

  “I…what should we do about the objective?” he asked the general, too bemused to even sustain his anger.

  “Have the rest of your team proceed as planned. They should be able to accomplish the task without you holding their hands?”

  Ian replied numbly, “Yes.”

  The general nodded, a fleeting smile crossing his features. “Good. We’ve got a ground transport waiting near the cliff base. It will take you to a place shielded by mountains, where a shuttle can take you off planet without detection. I’ll expect you here in a few days. Oh, just so you know, we’re not meeting on Earth or in the Centauri system. Epsilon Eridani is your destination. Out.”

  With that the transmission went dead, and Ian pulled the cable free of his helmet in a daze. The cord whipped back into the drone, and it instantly dropped from sight. Looking over and down at his teammates, he saw them holding position on the cliff face, staring up at him. They had seen the exchange and knew something was afoot. Ian sighed, and with his free hand he signed to them to continue without him. His second in command gave him the “affirmative” response, and just like that, Ian’s duties there were concluded.

  It was time to go. He hit the grav release on his left forearm control panel. In one fluid motion he arched his torso away from the rock wall, extending both legs forcefully as he did so. His kick propelled him in a graceful backward dive away from the cliff, flying outward and past the team members below him. Their suit-clad forms rushed by and were gone as he gained momentum in a vertical free fall toward the surface. He twisted in midair, turning belly-down to the ground. From this height he could see the panorama of rocky badlands extending in a green and black mosaic all the way to the horizon. The sun was dropping low in the sky, casting long shadows over the tumbled landscape below.

  The wind buffeted his suit as the cliff flew by in a blur. Down, down he dropped, the ground features swelling as they rushed to meet him. Ian waited until he was low enough to escape likely detection from above. Then he punched the parachute release, and the impact slammed his upper body as his speed was abruptly arrested. He floated now, suspended above the rocky spires and valleys, drifting on cold air currents. Grabbing the control cords, he scanned the terrain beneath him, and after a moment began steering his chute toward a likely landing site. His one thought as he headed slowly down was that this had better be really important.

  * * * *

  True to his word, the general had provided top-level transportation both on the ground and in space. Speed was apparently a priority. The small interstellar shuttle was of unfamiliar conformation, but it moved through hyperspace faster than anything Ian had previously ridden.

  A few short days later he was in the Epsilon Eridani system, located about 10.5 light years from Earth. The second planet, named Ariel, was a stark, rocky sphere with little atmosphere, but lying within the system’s habitable zone. Its size and location meant that gravitation and surface temperatures were moderate by human standards. Those traits, combined with its low atmospheric density, made Ariel an ideal site for the research observatory which the military had built on and under the planet’s surface.

  Upon landing, the shuttle’s commander escorted Ian to his quarters to freshen up. A few hours later he was seated in a conference room around a long table with a dozen other representatives of the Planetary Union. Their uniforms marked many of them as high-level military officials, but about half of those present wore the blue and gold smocks of the Science Division. Ian was relieved to see his armed forces liaison, Colonel Parker, among those seated at the table. He had been worried that his usual command hierarchy might have been cut out of the loop entirely.

  The general who had contacted him previously now presided at the table’s head, with Ian seated at the other end. Without preamble General McAllister introduced the individuals in attendance, many of whom were prominent physicists from various star systems. Besides humans, there were several alien races represented. To Ian’s surprise a blue-tentacled Corotian sat in attendance near the far end of the table. Its home system was nearly fifteen hundred light years from Earth, making it one of the most outlying members of the Union. Whatever was taking place must be significant to warrant a trip of that magnitude.

  When introductions were finished, General McAllister looked Ian in the eye and said, “Welcome from all of us, Mr. Colorado. I imagine you want to know what this is all about.”

  “You could say that,” Ian replied evenly. “I was taken off a very important mission to be here.”

  “Not as important as this,” the general assured him. “Perhaps I should have Dr. Cavanaugh explain the background to you.” With that he looked to his left, where sat a comely fortyish woman with sandy blond hair.

  The doctor smiled at Ian and began, “About ten years ago, the researchers at this facility encountered a most peculiar phenomenon. The sensor arrays registered a massive spike across the electromagnetic spectrum, one which had no definable source. It seemingly came from everywhere in known space.”

  Ian raised his eyebrows in surprise; this was not sounding like a typical briefing. Dr. Cavanaugh continued, “Even more puzzling were the simultaneous gravitational waves originating from every celestial body in range of the detectors. It was as if something had violently jarred all of spacetime and left it to oscillate in the aftermath.”

  “This was a galaxy-wide phenomenon, not localized to this system?” Ian asked, perplexed.

  “Not just galaxy-wide,” the Corotian emissary interjected. Its puckered mouth made sounds like popping bubbles as it pronounced the human words. “This occurrence appears to have involved all of known spacetime, including other galaxies and celestial objects out to the furthest reaches of our universe.”

  Ian held the alien’s gaze, saying slowly, “That…is hard to believe. The magnitude of such an anomaly rules out a new type of weapon, I would think.”

  A dark-haired man sitting next to Dr. Cavanaugh nodded. “Agreed. I head the combat tech group at Alpha Centauri Base. No technology we know of could create a disruption that widespread.”

  Dr. Cavanaugh added, “It gets worse. After the Event, as we referred to it, we ran intensive scans of known space, using sensors and telescopic arrays. While
doing so, we started to recognize other anomalies, things that should not, could not, have been possible. But there was no doubting the measurements, not when they had been checked, and rechecked, and compared to those taken in other inhabited solar systems. The data supported only one conclusion, as incredible as it sounds: our universe had dimmed.”

  Ian sat back in his chair. “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

  The doctor leaned forward, hands folded as she returned his gaze intently. “I mean that all the stars within reach of our scans showed a loss of luminosity and a shift toward the red spectrum. In layman’s terms, every sun had become darker and cooler.”

  Ian wasn’t a physicist, but he felt a chill run down his spine. He was beginning to comprehend what had these science types looking worried as hell. He licked his lips and asked, “How much did they dim?”

  A third scientist sitting to Ian’s right spoke up. He was a squat Rigelian with a neatly trimmed feather crest topping his orange-tinged head, and he stroked it unconsciously as he spoke in a high-pitched voice, “The changes were infinitesimal, on the order of less than one tenth of one percentage point, but they were real. Furthermore, our detectors revealed similar reductions in radio emissions from black holes, and even in the cosmic background radiation that is left over from the universe’s birth. All energy, everywhere, was reduced by a distinct and measurable amount.”

  Ian glanced from face to face around the table before venturing, “I gather that it didn’t end there, or we wouldn’t be discussing it now.”

  Dr. Cavanaugh sighed and answered, “Unfortunately, you are correct. Six months after the first event, another ripple jolted our spacetime, and the output from detectable energy sources dipped again. From that point forward the anomaly has repeated an average of four times per year. Over the decade since the first recorded incident, the measurable solar heat and light output in all inhabited star systems has dropped nearly three percent.”

  Ian sat stunned as he absorbed the meaning of the words. “But that would cause changes…,” he said haltingly.