Day of the Dragonstar Read online

  And so, even though he had selected his crew for the primary objective—twenty engineers and EV A riggers, plus the three paleontologists—Phineas still had twelve (including himself) highly-trained astronauts with planetary exploration experience. Twelve physically and mentally tough men and women who could form a small, extremely capable expeditionary force. Phineas dreamed of leading them, armed with sophisticated weaponry and survival gear, through the interior of the Dragonstar in search of Becky.

  He would certainly have the time for it, he thought. Once the initial surveys and preliminary explorations had been conducted, and the out-rigger engines had been attached to the alien vessel’s hull, there would be plenty of time for extracurricular activity. It would be a long trip back to lunar orbit, and everyone would, need something to keep himself occupied. Mikaela Lindstrom, the chief paleontologist from the Institute for Biological and, Paleontological Research, and her two assistants, would be busy with their dinosaurs. Robert Jakes, the chief engineer, and his men would keep tabs on their juryrigged tugboat operation. Phineas would be providing security for the rest of the crew, planning a search and examination of the alien crew quarters, and perhaps sending out a few exploratory teams.

  If Becky was alive, he would find her.

  He finished his coffee and examined the readouts again.

  * * *

  The Goddard accelerated through the emptiness of space, her computers constantly reassessing her position in comparison to that of the Dragonstar, and guiding it into an oscillating trajectory that would sweep in grandly alongside the giant alien vessel. The weeks passed quickly for the crew as they prepared for a quick, well-coordinated assault on the spinning cylinder. Phineas Kemp conducted briefing sessions and contingency-plan meetings at regular intervals. The crew was bombarded with every scrap of information known about the Dragonstar until every man and woman knew the vessel and their job connected with it as well as they knew their most secret thoughts. There would be no screw-ups this time around. Three strikes and you’re out, Kemp had told them, and it was time for a home run.

  As the Goddard closed in on its target, Kemp had all of the crew as excited and anxious to get moving as a high school football team the night before the Thanksgiving Day game.

  All except one.

  His name was Ross Canter. He was one of Doctor Jakes’s Assistant Flight Engineers. Tall, thin, and somewhat emaciated looking, Canter was considered one of the best men in his chosen profession. He had a slightly Mediterranean aspect, a fact which he attributed to his mixed parentage of Israeli and Irish, which was borne out by the fax sheet in his Security Clearance file.

  That information was, of course, incorrect.

  Ross Canter, whose real name was Pierre Rassim, was a member of the Third World Confederation’s Intelligence Division—known simply as the Jiha—although his contacts with his superiors since joining the IASA fifteen years ago had been extremely infrequent. He was part of a vast community of global spies and agents whose existence was acknowledged by all participating countries and alliances, but whose individual identities were not always known. It was said that espionage was quite boring in the long run, and that it was not the pulse-quickening life described In popular films and novels. Ross Canter would agree with that completely. In his years of service to the Jiha, he had never been called upon to do anything, other than file his “progress reports” on a regular basis, which served only to allow his superiors to know that he was still alive. He often assumed that he was being watched, monitored so to speak, by other agents so that it could be known if he was being unconsciously swayed by the “other side,” but he had never been aware of any surveillance.

  In actuality, Canter had to admit that the first place had been waning as he grew older. It was said that age makes more conservatives than speeches, and he tended to agree with the aphorism. As an engineer with IASA, he concluded that he would have been doing a similar function in the TWC, and that he loved his work as much as a man should. Therefore, he supposed it did not really matter which government he worked for, since he was in the long run, an engineer and not a spy.

  The only factor, in fact, which had kept him loyal to the Third World Confederation was the kindnesses and story-telling abilities of an old man named Ahmad Nesrudah. Canter had been a small boy living with his parents in Beirut during the outbreak of the near-disastrous Oil War in 1998. The Lebanese city was practically Ieveled in the course of the action, and there were hundreds of thousands of war-orphans, of whom Canter was one of the more fortunate.

  Ahmad Nesrudah had been an Iranian Oil Minister during one of that country’s various political/religious ruling regimes, but he had possessed the good sense to vacate the area before it became personally dangerous. When his wife and remaining children were killed during a series of surgical bombings, he set out to replace his family with an orphan son. Finding the young Pierre Rassim in a Unesco Center, Nesrudah adopted him and transported him to his private villa in a small Saudi town, where he was revered as a teacher. The boy grew up under the sharp and intelligent care of the old man. He was taught to trust no one but himself, to arm himself with knowledge, and to respect the ancient Arabian traditions.

  Old Ahmad seemed to delight most in telling the boy stories of the Arab terrorist groups of the latter half of the twentieth century—a time when he had been more politically active himself. It was then that the Third World became recognized as a force to be dealt with, and it was only because of the glorious efforts of their ancestors. It was the first time in almost a thousand years that the noble culture which had its roots in the Ottoman Empire had raised itself and challenged the supremacy of the Europeans and the upstart Americans—mere children in the world of culture and antiquity.

  Ross Canter/Rassim had loved the old man dearly, and had many times sworn to him that he would never betray the ideals in which he believed. After attending the University of Palestine, he entered the Jiha, and was sent to Chicago, where he began living his false identity, living the life of a secret agent, waiting for the moment when he might be called to serve the ideology of the TWC and the memory of old Ahmad Nesrudah.

  The moment had finally arrived.

  * * *

  Phineas Kemp sat in the Command chair as the Goddard approached the long-awaited rendezvous. “This is Colonel Kemp on board the Goddard. Calling Commander Fratz . . . Come in . . .”

  The radio crackled for a moment before Fratz’s voice came through. “Good afternoon, Colonel, we’ve been expecting you. Sorry that I don’t have anything to report . . . but things have been quiet since—”

  “We figured as much, Commander. Stand by for docking . . . You can go to automatic any time now. Report to the Command cabin when you’re on board.”

  “Yes sir . . . Docking procedure sequence starting now. Stand by, Goddard.”

  Once the smaller Heinlein had linked up with the larger ship, Kemp intended to have Fratz and Bracken pilot the Goddard’s landing module, since they were the only ones with anything one might call experience in landing upon the Dragonstar. Kemp wanted to waste no time in getting the mission under way, and had already assembled the first part of the team in the transport bay of the lander. He had been over the recordings Coopersmith and Bracken had completed on the alien batch opening sequences and the descriptions of the “ascent” to the surface of the inner world of the alien cylinder. Phineas planned to lead the first group of ten into the Dragonstar— their first objective to establish a secure base camp, and then begin disarming the defensive systems of the outer hull so that the engine-rigging could begin.

  He looked at the impossibly large expanse of the alien ship through the main view screen and shook his head. Even though he had seen the VOR recordings uncountable times, and had watched the cylinder grow larger and larger as the Goddard approached, it was still difficult to accept how immense the thing was. Phineas’s ship was more than two hundred meter
s long, one of the biggest ships in the Deep-Space Division, and it was like a flea preparing to land on an elephant’s back in comparison. The Goddard was so close now, that that cylinder was no longer recognizable as a ship—its endless surface stretched in all directions like the surface of a medium-sized moon. The details of its hull stood out in the sharp relief of sunlight and shadow. Phineas sat watching the screen, thinking that this gigantic thing—this ship of monsters—would not beat him. It was his for the taking, and he would not fail.

  “Excuse me, Colonel, but Fratz is on board now,” said the Assistant Flight Commander.

  “Tell him to get up here on the double.”

  Phineas looked back to the screen, trying to imagine what it would be like inside the Dragonstar. Until this moment, the thought of being frightened, or even apprehensive, had not touched him, but now as the moment grew nearer, he felt the bottom dropping out of his stomach. He wondered how he was going to hold up under the pressure.

  Fratz entered the cabin just then, and Kemp was glad for the escape from his thoughts. He quickly briefed him on the landing procedures and gave Fratz a chance to offer any additional advice that might be helpful. After a short discussion of technique, both men left the cabin—Fratz to enter the Command chair of the landing module, Kemp to the transport bay.

  The first group into the lander included Lindstrom and her two assistants, Kemp, and six other astronauts. Everyone wore standard EVA gear and carried with them large survival packs with the gear they would need once inside the Dragonstar, Kemp and his men also carried equipment racks and a field generator which would be needed to rig up an electromagnetic “fence” around the perimeter of the base camp. In addition, each man and woman was equipped with a sidearm razer, which looked very much like the Bren gun of the previous century, although it fired a concentrated beam of heat energy instead of standard slugs. The paleontologists had objected to carrying the weapons, but that was before Kemp had allowed them to view the recordings of the tragedy of the first expedition.

  Standing in the transport bay, Kemp spoke into his helmet radio. “We’re secured down here, Commander. Any time you’re ready . . .”

  “Stand by, Colonel. I’ve commenced separation . . . It’s not a very long trip.”

  There was a soft metallic thud as the lander broke away from the Goddard and began tilting over to the proper touchdown attitude. Kemp studied the faces of his team, looking for traces of fear and uncertainty. There was no place for it now.

  “We are descending now, Colonel. One hundred and fifty meters, and closing . . . Standby . . . Seventy-five . . . fifty . . . stand by . . . We have touchdown.”

  Just as Fratz spoke there was a clang which traveled through the superstructure of the lander. Kemp was suddenly aware of the pull of his magnetic boots against the bay floor as the centrifugal forces of the rotating alien ship attempted to push him away from the lander’s deck. He decompressed the bay, watched as the door slid open to reveal the large rectangular seams of the entrance hatch. To the right of the hatch, Kemp saw immediately the burned out panel which Coopersmith’s team had cut away with a razer-torch, to reveal a series of manual controls. Phineas eased his way down to the surface of the hull and began motioning for the others to follow, while he walked carefully and slowly up to the manual override controls. Although the levers looked a bit large for easy manipulation by the human hand, he had no trouble activating the airlock system and he breathed a bit easier as the outer panel of the lock slid open soundlessly.

  “Okay, everyone. Inside the chamber. Slowly, please. That’s it . . . one at a time.”

  The team gathered inside the first chamber of the lock, which was quite large, and could accommodate twice as many in comfort, then watched Colonel Kemp enter. He kicked free of the metallic flooring and floated up to the lock control panel on the inside of the chamber, then slowly reached for the yellow lever.

  Just as Coopersmith had reported, the outer hull panel slid shut, sealing the team in total darkness until Kemp turned on his utility lamp. He reached up and touched the green lever, which activated the atmosphere/pressure cycling. The sound of gas entered the chamber and everyone stood silently, listening until an electronic chime sounded. Kemp reached up and pulled the final lever, a dull red in color, and the sound of machinery humming could be heard as the inner door slid open to the left.

  “All right,” said Kemp. “Turn on your utility lamps, and follow me. Up ahead here is an access shaft. The rails are handholds with some evenly-spaced struts to use for your footing. I want you to all assemble on the other side of the airlock and discard the EVA gear, then get yourselves outfitted for the trip up this shaft. Be careful on the ascent, and be sure to give the fellow ahead of you enough room. Now, let’s get started.”

  The group filed into the shaft and Kemp followed them, closing the airlock and making certain that the air pressure was all right before unlocking his EVA helmet. The others followed his lead, and soon everyone was stripped down to their tight-fitting coveralls and radio helmets. Each member of the team shouldered his or her survival pack and lined up for the long climb, but waiting for Phineas to take the lead. He noticed that no one spoke, although there was more than the usual amount of coughing and throat-clearing.

  Phineas climbed the hundred meters up to a square platform, but long before he reached it, he could see the blazing square of light that was the open entry hatch—the place where Alan Huff had been attacked while transmitting, the audiovisual signals back to Copernicus Base.

  “All right, attention . . . I’m on the landing platform below the hatch. I want everyone to assemble here before we go up. The hatch is open, and extreme caution is the order of the day. When you get up here, draw your sidearms, but keep them on safety until ordered otherwise.”

  Kemp stood off to the side and watched his team slowly join him on the platform. He kept looking up through the hatch where the bright light of the ship’s interior burned whitely. From his angle, it was impossible to discern anything clearly, but his imagination was filling in what the eye could not yet see. His pulse was pounding in his ears, and it seemed so loud that he was certain that his helmet-mike was picking up the sound.

  When the last man had clambered up to the platform, Kemp signaled the Command cabin of the Goddard. “This is Kemp . . . We’ve reached the entry hatch to the interior and we are preparing to go topside. We will provide visual as soon as some defensive perimeters have been established. Stand by, Goddard . . . we’re going up . . .”

  Kemp climbed through the hatch and stared about the clearing. A feeling of déja vu swept over him as he looked across the clearing, to flanking walls of proto-firs, cycads, and redwoods, to the sloping marshland and mudflat where the first team had recorded the waddling herd of Iguanodons. In the hazy distance, the mottled foliage of the landscape curved upward towards the halo-like glow of the central illuminating rod. No horizon. It was a heart-stopping sight, even though Phineas had been prepared for it, and it made all those “artist’s conceptions” pitiful in comparison.

  Slowly, he climbed up to the soft, spongy turf, listening to the chittering, humming sounds of this world. Motioning for the rest of the team to follow quickly, Kemp moved down off the small knoll and found the remains of Huff’s communications gear. Some of the metallic parts were already showing signs of corrosion in the humid atmosphere, and the plastic casings were laced with tiny teeth marks—little predators testing out anything for a possible meal, he assumed.

  But that was all. There was absolutely no sign of Huff’s body, nor any of the others. Apparently nothing was wasted in this world of primitive instincts. There was a distant scream in the air. Looking up, Phineas saw a dark shape far away, gliding like a kite in the misty sky. The intruders had been spotted and the signal was going out. He wanted no repeat of the previous team’s experience.

  “We’ve got to move quickly,” he said to everyone through t
he radiophones. “There’ll be plenty of time for oohs and aahs. Let’s get that fence up . . .”

  Phineas was pleased with the efficiency with which his team operated. They could have been in Central Park for all the attention they paid to the Jurassic wonders all about them. Within ten minutes they had staked out a large circle in the clearing approximately a hundred meters in diameter. The enclosure was circumscribed by a series of “fence-posts” placed at regular intervals along the eight thousand-meter circumference. Each post was a miniature field-generator controlled by a central transmitter, which operated in synch with the posts on either side of it. Anything that attempted to pass between the posts would do two things: set off an alarm and get itself hit with three hundred thousand volts at stunning amperage. It was a simple “force-field” security barrier, which could easily be foiled by intelligent espionage elements, but would be extremely effective against any predatory dinosaurs.

  The power was turned on, the perimeter tested and found to be working perfectly. Phineas felt immediately more at ease once the team was secure, and relayed the information back to the Goddard. He ordered Doctor Jakes and his team of engineers and riggers to begin disarming the Dragonstar’s defensive systems, so that installation of the impulse engines could begin as soon as possible. Using a refined version of Coopersmith’s original methods, Jakes’ team should be able to have the first engines in place within forty-eight hours.