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Authors: David Bischoff,Thomas F. Monteleone

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BOOK: Day of the Dragonstar
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The Allosaurus threw back its head, rejoicing in its triumph with a final roar of primordial joy. Then it ambled up to the remains of the dead Gorgosaurus, and began to rip and tear with reptilian gusto. Coopersmith watched it feed for the better part of an hour. He held Rebecca Thalberg, who was now quietly sobbing. When the Allosaurus finished its bloody meal, it slowly settled down, reclining over the skeletal carcass of the victim. Coopersmith knew that it would now fall into a heavy doze—a half-awake torpor, while its great body labored to digest the feast.

Not forty meters from the hulking beast lay the entrance hatch and safety. After seeing the quickness of the predators of this world, the unmerciful death they held in their claws and jaws, Coopersmith knew that he would not risk trying for the hatch as long as the Allosaurus remained close at hand. He felt defenseless against the hostile world they had found. It was an arena of twisted nightmare, full of God-knew-what-else beside the dreadful things they’d already seen devour their companions.

“C’mon. We’ve gotta move a little farther back into the foliage.”

Rebecca wordlessly obeyed.

They slid past the brushing vegetation, crawled over fallen trees for some minutes.

Something rustled in the forest behind them. Ian tensed.

“What is it?” Rebecca asked.

“I don’t know. The smell of blood keeps drawing more to the area. Not safe back there now. That’s why we’re moving on just a bit.”

“What about the hatch?”

“No way. The big fellow’s out there sleeping it off. I don’t want to wake him up.” Ian patted her protectively on the shoulder. For a moment, she relaxed. Then she gazed upwards.

“Ian. Look . . . Look at the light. It’s getting dark! Oh my God, no . . . It’s getting
dark!”

Coopersmith studied the junglescape and noticed that the colors seemed a bit more saturated, that the shadows were deeper, darker than they had previously been. Flipping down his goggles, he stared up at what he could see of the light rod in the far away center of the cylinder.

It
did
seem dimmer. More solidly defined.

He held Rebecca for a moment after flipping up the goggles. “You’re right. The light source must be timed, automatically, so that it produces a natural cycle of night and day.”

Rebecca shivered. “Ian, I don’t think I can stand it here in the darkness . . .”

“Let’s get away from the clearing. The safest place would be up in some high branches. Can you climb a tree?”

“Sure
I can,” she said, almost indignantly. She was recovering her spunk. Good, thought Coopersmith. She’d need it.

They stood and walked cautiously farther into the cooling shadows ‘of the forest as darkness descended. The world was again lulled into false serenity by insects.

A cry of hunger pierced the growing darkness.

CHRIST
,
what a wretched headache he had.

Phineas Kemp seemed wrapped in a thick mist of preoccupation as he sat in an uncharacteristic slouch before the Command console. All around him, voices blended in a babble of shouts. Confusion arid shock and even a hint of panic stirred through the room, like the echoes of his own mind. The headache had been there before all this. Now it pounded like the voice of doom.

The Deep-Space radio crackled with the voice of
Heinlein
pilot Fratz, but Phineas was not listening. He kept replaying the sounds of the final attack by the Allosaurus on his crew.
Rebecca.
Visions of her mauled swam in his brain, as violently as the ache there. Becky! No . . . Not Becky!

He managed to remain calm. Solar no final verification, no
proof
that she had been killed. She might have escaped . . .

“Colonel Kemp . . . ?” Communications Officer Alterman said.

“Yes? What is it?”

“I’ve got Commander Fratz on hold, sir. He’s awaiting further instructions.”

“Oh, yes. Of course,” said Kemp.

He’d been in the Mission Command Center when the
Heinlein
crew entered Artifact One. Kemp and the Chiefs of Staff had shared the astonishment of the crew’s finding. A little world . . . A lost world . . . A
model
of the Jurassic period of Earth, perfectly preserved. Incredible, inconceivable. And yet they’d seen it with their own eyes, heard its savage sounds.

They’d watched helplessly as the crew was overrun by the carnivorous beasts.

Kemp expelled a shivery breath as he flicked the transmission switch on his console. “Kemp here. Go on, Fratz.”

Fratz’s voice was strained. “Colonel, we’ve completely lost contact with the exploration team. Do you want us to go in?”

“Negative, Fratz. You and Bracken are not equipped to deal with the situation in there. We’re going to need some fairly sophisticated weaponry and defensive rigs to handle those lizards.”

“What about my crew!”

“I think . . . I think we have to presume that they are beyond our help at this point. At any rate, I don’t want to risk the loss of more lives and equipment. I want you to remain in matched orbit with Artifact One for twenty-four hours. If any of the crew have survived, that should give them enough time to reach Huff’s communication gear and contact your ship. If they contact you, request further orders from Mission Control. We’ll be studying the situation down here. We’ll keep you updated. That’s it for now. Copernicus out.”

Fratz signed off, leaving Phineas alone with his thoughts. He was of two minds about sending Fratz and Bracken into the alien ship. There were arguments for both courses of action, but Kemp was not emotionally prepared to discuss them at the moment.

Someone slapped him on the shoulder and sat down. It was Gregor Kolenkhov. “My friend, l cannot believe this. How can we have seen what we have indeed seen. By Lenin’s Tomb, I have never heard of such a thing!”

“Who could have anticipated anything like this?” asked Kemp rhetorically, shaking his head. He was getting groggy from lack of sleep, having been up for the last twenty hours. He wondered if he could fall asleep knowing what was happening our beyond the orbit of Mars.

“But what the hell
is
that thing?” said Kolenkhov. “An alien ship full of
dinosaurs . . .
it’s absurd . . . it’s unreal.”

“But it
is
real, Gregor. We
know
that it is, and we must deal with it as such.” Phineas looked about the room, where the other Chiefs were standing about talking, obviously unsure as to whether or not they should intrude on his conversation. Phineas had the feeling that even though he must get approval from the Joint Directors, everyone was looking to him for the solutions—even though he had thoroughly fouled up the first two attempts to deal with exploration of Artifact One. What was it the Americans always said—three strikes and you’re out? He had a feeling that they were correct,

“Where did it come from?” asked Kolenkhov. “That’s what keeps eating at me. What
is
it?”

Kemp looked up at his friend, trying to push the troubled thoughts from his mind. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said slowly. “Labate figures that it could have been in solar orbit for a long time, right? Why not for about a hundred and sixty million years?”

“That’s impossible. What kind of civilization could have built a ship, or
anything
for that matter, that could last that long?”

“It’s not impossible,” said Phineas. “Artifact One is a completely self-sufficient
world.
It could be equipped with servomechanisms and systems that are self-repairing. It could be robot-ship that is capable of existing indefinitely. As for the dinosaurs, the answer seems rather obvious—it’s some kind of ‘specimen ship’ that visited our world back during the Jurassic. The alien crew, whoever they were, probably outfitted the interior of the ship with the suitable atmosphere, and then picked up samples of Earth Iife-forms. It would seem probable that the ship is capable of creating a variety of planetary environments, depending upon what world the aliens visited.”

“Big-game hunters of the galaxy,” said Kolenkhov. “Incredible. But you might be right . . .”

“The big question remains, though: Who were the aliens who built that ship, and what happened to them?”

“You mean why didn’t the ship ever leave our solar system after picking up the animals? Why is it still here after hundreds of millions of years?”

“Yes. As perfect-seeming as Artifact One might appear to us, something must have gone wrong. Either with the crew or with their interstellar drive. A plague perhaps, which could have wiped out the crew? Some kind of equipment failure?”

“Maybe this isn’t the time to be worrying about it, my friend.”

“You’re right,” said Kemp. “I’ve got to answer to the Joint Directors for this fiasco. Six more people killed and time is running out.”

“Running out for what?”

“The closer that thing gets to the sun, the faster it is accelerating. The closer it comes to us, the more chance that the Chinese or the Third World will detect its presence. I don’t have to tell you how bad it would be if either of them got their hands on that ship.”

“What do you have in mind?” Kolenkhov asked.

I don’t see where we have much choice. Whether or not the
Heinlein
does make contact—we
have
to send another ship out there, Gregor. We’ve got to intercept that ship and bring it into our own backyard, and we’ve got to do it fast.”

“What about Fratz and Bracken?”

“I don’t know. If I keep them out there, waiting for something that might not happen, it seems to serve no purpose. But if another ship is dispatched to intercept them, they could help the new crew get things operational.”

“If you’re asking me for my opinion,” said the large Russian, “I would let them stay there. Just in case . . . You never know.”

Kemp shook his head in thought. “I have to think about it for a while. Everyone is kind of in a state of shock right now. It’s probably not a good time to ask for rational observation or advice. Nobody could have predicted anything like this . . .”

Neither man spoke for a moment. The silence that hung in the Mission Control Center was a heavy cloak which threatened to suffocate everyone. The Communications Chief, Alterman, broke the silence. “Colonel-Kemp . . . I’ve got a message from the Joint Directors. They would Iike to see you at once. Executive Conference Room in Admins.”

Kemp grinned ironically. “Well, I can’t say I haven’t expected this . . .”

Gregor Kolenkhov stood up and put his large, beefy hand on Kemp’s shoulder. “Listen, my friend. It might not help matters, but you can tell them that all of us are behind you a hundred percent.”

Smiling, Kemp shook his head. “Thank you, Gregor. I hate to admit it, but I’m feeling pretty isolated right about now.”

Kolenkhov picked up the feelings beneath the words and his expression changed from cheeriness to a grim embarrassment. “About Becky . . . I don’t know what to say . . . except that perhaps we have no confirmation that she was
. . .
was lost.”

Kemp shook his head. “I . . . I shouldn’t let my emotions get in the way, Gregor. I’m sorry.”

“Phineas, please, you have nothing to be sorry about. Our lives are not controlled by graphs and computer readouts. It’s okay to feel things, you should know that.”

Kemp shook his head, knowing that Kolenkhov was correct. The man had inadvertently touched upon one of the greatest problems in Kemp’s life. Becky was constantly bugging him to let himself go, to
feel.
Now he wondered if it mattered anymore. “All right,” he said finally. “Thank you, Gregor. I suppose I should be getting over to Admins. Take over for me here, would you?”

“Of course.”

* * *

The conference room table was lined with the four Joint Directors and Oscar Rheinhardt of Security. No one else was present. They waited until Kemp had entered the room and took a seat at the end of the table. He felt as though he was on trial.

Director Pohl cleared his throat before speaking. “We would like to take this opportunity to tell you how shocked and sorry we are to have to meet with you under these-conditions. However, I want to stress at the beginning that we do not hold you responsible for what happened to the
Heinlein
crew.”

As the others nodded, Kemp thought to himself that he did not care what the Directors felt—because he held
himself
responsible for the disaster. That was what counted. But all he said was: “Thank you, sir. I understand completely.”

Pohl nodded and continued. “The reason for the meeting is obvious, Colonel. What do we do now?”

Phineas paused for a moment, reflecting on what he had said to Kolenkhov privately. They had been his true feelings on the operation and he saw no reason to veil them when speaking with the lASA Directors.

“The way I see things, sir, there is nothing we
can
do . . . except to try again. I suggest that we outfit one of our biggest ships—one of the Outer Planets Class like the
Goddard
or the
Von Braun
—and
get a team of the best specialists available. We go out there for two reasons: to search for survivors, and to rig Artifact One with some high-thrust engines so that we can steer it out of its present orbit and guide it back to Earth. We can put it into Earth-moon L-5 position, where we can study it indefinitely. I don’t think I have to explain the scientific, as well as political, importance that alien ship represents.”

Everyone at the table nodded thoughtfully. Chris Alvarez looked at Kemp, then spoke. “Is this suggestion of yours feasible, Colonel? Do we have the equipment and the know-how to pull it off?”

“Once we have assembled our personnel, we can run a variety of feasibility-scenarios through the computers. Then we would have a few optimal probability models to choose from. I’m convinced that we can handle it. Now that we know what we are up against.”

Several of the other Directors discussed Kemp’s plan among themselves, as though he were not present. He could not detect anything negative in their considerations. Everyone seemed to be of the same basic belief—that they had no choice but to continue to deal with Artifact One. There was simply no way that humankind could ignore the presence of such an incredible discovery.

“Time is our worst enemy at this point,” said one of the Russian Joint Directors. “You must begin assembling a crew for the second mission immediately. How long would it take?”

“Under normal conditions, I would not launch a Deep-Space ship the size of the
Goddard
without at least two weeks of preparation, but we don’t have that kind of time. We must launch within seventy-two hours to ensure that we intercept with enough time to outfit Artifact One and revise its flight path.”

“Is it possible to mobilize in that short a time?” asked Nelson

“I’m going to need a lot of help,” said Kemp.

“You’ll get that,” said Alvarez.

“What about Security?” asked Phineas. “How are we going to cover the kind of activity that will be going on around here? Copernicus Base will be turned upside down in the rush to get that ship and crew ready.”

Oscar Rheinhardt cleared his throat. “I’ve been giving that some thought, Phineas. That’s why I’ve been invited to attend this little get-together. The official line of the
Heinlein
mission was a preliminary survey of a large rogue asteroid on a close approach with the Earth. I can prepare a statement for the media and for the general staff on Copernicus that should satisfy even the most curious.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I’ll get together with Professor Labate, and have him concoct some data on the rogue asteroid. We will say that there is a possibility of close flyby with the moon, and that we are sending another ship out there to either divert the course of the thing, or rig it with some H-bombs and blow it to hell and back.”

BOOK: Day of the Dragonstar
6.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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