DS02 Night of the Dragonstar (10 page)

“It has just occurred to me to ask, my friend
—
have you heard from Ian Coopersmith?”

Mishima smiled at the mention of the captain’s name. The tactical engineer had become something of a legend among the IASA staff. Just the mention of his name commanded immediate respect.

Mishima shook his head. “No. I never knew him personally. He remains on Earth.”

“He will never come back to us?” Thesaurus asked.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t answer that.”

“That is unfortunate. I am thinking that perhaps we could use a human like him to help us now. Perhaps I could even travel to your Earth someday.”

“Really?” Mishima said in surprise, instantly imagining what a carnival the media would have with that kind of stunt.

“Yes. I think that I am missing the company of Captain Coopersmith. He was a very good man.”

Mishima nodded. “From everything I’ve heard, he would be a good man to have around right about now.”

“Yes. Captain Coopersmith could help us solve the mystery. There is something very wrong here. Something is happening to all of us.”

* * *

The Stegosaurus lumbered away from her nest to fetch a drink. Finding her way to a nearby pool was an amazing feat of memory for the beast, for although she had two brains
—
one in her skull, the other a more primitive knot of ganglia at the base of her spiked tail
—
she was an extraordinarily dull creature. Despite the extra hundred-plus million years for biological improvement, her species had reached an evolutionary dead end.

She dragged her huge body from her nesting place along a worn path through an outcropping of rock. The light from the Illuminator beat down on her camouflaged hide with its usual comforting heat
—
the heat that warmed the Stegosaurus’s eggs and relieved the beast of the duty of warming them herself. She remained in the area of her eggs out of habit, perhaps to guard her emerging offspring, perhaps merely following deeply etched atavistic instincts.

And now that she was thirsty, she sought out a familiar pool.

It was a little more than a widening of a stream into a basin. The pool was a popular watering hole, and many species could often be seen standing cheek to jowl sharing a cool drink. As the Stegosaurus sauntered down to the water’s edge, she ignored a group of Ankylossaurus on the opposite bank. She dipped her bullet-shaped head into the pool.

The stream was fed by an underground system of pumps and valves and other hidden machinery, and the creatures who used the pool took no notice of what lay beneath the sparkling depths. Nudging some reeds and mosses away from the edge, the Stegosaurus continued to drink. There was a leisurely pace to her actions because, although she was ever alert, her plated back and spiked tail were enough of a defensive system to make most predators wary of trying an attack.

Her eyes stared ahead with a normal dullness, peering unwittingly beneath the surface where something began to glow.

It was a slight flash at first, like the glint of gold in a prospector’s pan, but within moments it grew. One of the elements of the pumping machinery had started to glow, irradiated by automatically controlled energies within the outer hull. The ship was undergoing changes, and the irradiated machinery was a by-product of that change.

The pulsing element had a hypnotic effect on the Stegosaurus, and she stood there, a mouthful of unswallowed water ignored in her mouth. The Ankylosaurus were equally entranced, peering into the water with wide-eyed fascination. Radiation emanated from the depths, penetrating the Stegosaurus’s hide, burning its primitive brain. It stood there transfixed by the light until the water began to boil from the heat of the underwater element. The steamy mist and the bubbling broke the mesmeric trance, and the Stegosaurus blinked.

No longer thirsty, she turned and fought off a feeling of disequilibrium, moving ponderously back toward her nesting area. She had received a staggering dose of radiation, and she stumbled several times along the path. Flies seemed to swarm behind her eyes, and hot flashes raged along her spinal cord.

As she reached the depression that held her nest, she barely noticed the other members of her scattered herd, not even the father of her children, who casually cropped bushes in the distance. The image of her half-buried eggs swam in her vision for a moment, then her forelegs buckled, collapsing her to the ground, where she drifted into unconsciousness.

The Stegosaurus lay comatose for several hours, occasionally examined by her herd but largely ignored.

When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was the oppressive heat. The cooling radiator effect of the plates along her back did not seem to be working, and the creature’s body felt aflame. Her tiny brain seemed ablaze as she struggled to an upright position and glared about as though looking for an enemy. Raising her head, she honked out a plaintive cry.

Her tail lashed reflexively, knocking about the surrounding rocks and underbrush. She could think of nothing but her maddening need for a drink. There was a burning pit in the center of her being, and she needed to fill it, to quench it as quickly as possible.

Spinning wildly about, her blurry gaze fell upon the seven off-white domes rising above loosely packed dirt.

Her burning madness and thirst drove her forward, and in a moment she was standing over the eggs. Dipping her beaklike snout, she punctured the leathery shell of one of the eggs. White mucous coated her mouth as she crazily slurped up the albumin and the half-formed fetus in the yolk.

Her thirst was not slaked.

One by one, in a growing rage, she smashed the eggs and drank their contents.

A kind of alarm was sounding in her brain, but she could not stop herself. Lifting her head, she cried out in pain and suffering. Her entire body began to itch, a fiery painful burning, and she thrashed her yolk-smeared snout into the dust to stop the terrible irritation. Her flanks tingled as she clawed at a spot with her hind claws until she opened a sore.

Wandering off in a private madness, away from her devastated nest, the Stegosaurus felt her brain frying away in the heat.

COLONEL PHINEAS
Kemp prepared to address the people assembled in one of the smaller debriefing rooms of Copernicus Base. It was an intimate, stepped auditorium equipped with VDT screens, a holographic imager, and a light-pointer so that a lecture could be amply backed up by all manner of visual aid. As he stepped up to the miked podium, the buzz of conversation in the hall subsided. Kemp took a moment to scan the audience, searching out the familiar faces of Becky Thalberg, seated next to Ian Coopersmith (Kemp was surprised they were not holding hands like a couple of college kids), Kate Ennis, and of course, “Long Jack” Neville.

The remainder of the audience was comprised of World Media Corporation people, an army of production-crew types
—
directors, producers, writers, still photographers, electricians, video cameramen, grips, stagehands. Kemp realized that for most of them this was their first trip off Earth, and they were reeling from the experience, having varying degrees of reaction
—
everything from nausea to transcendental awe.

By sounding an electronic chime on the podium, Kemp brought the assembly to order. Silence descended upon the room, and he could feel the crowd’s attention cascading down the bank of seats to wash over him. Once again Kemp commanded a position of authority, and it fit him like an old shoe.

Smiling easily, he began to speak. “Good evening. I realize for most of you, that this is your first trip offplanet, and I apologize for hustling you off to a meeting as soon as we touched down here at Copernicus Base. But there are a few things that I would like to cover before we begin the next stage of this operation.”

Phineas paused for an instant to judge the group’s reaction to his introduction. Aside from the obvious boredom of the IASA people and Neville’s near panic, everyone seemed to be paying respectful attention. Phineas continued, keying in some background holographic projections.

“This is the Dragonstar as seen from space. If this ship were on the surface of the Earth, with one end lying in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the other end would be in Manhattan’s East River. Three hundred twenty kilometers long, and more than sixty-five in diameter.”

Kemp paused as the audience murmured among themselves as the impact of the alien ship’s sheer size sunk into their minds. He keyed in a new sequence of images of the ship’s interior and continued.

“The interior is a marvel of biological and engineering genius. A totally self-contained world, carrying an exact duplicate of the Earth’s environment more than one hundred sixty million years ago
—
a perfect model of the Mesozoic Era.”

Kemp watched the audience as they absorbed the images of that ancient era of the Earth, alive once again. The lush green of the undergrowth; the tall redwoods and ginkgoes; the steamy, humid mist rising from the swampy marshlands.

“And of course, what is flora without fauna?” Kemp asked as the placid botanical scene was shattered by the emergence of an Allosaurus from the thick folds of the jungle growth. In sharp contrast to the muted shades of green, this large carnivore was striped in bright orange and browns. He moved with surprising agility, running, leaping, and pirouetting like a dancer across an open meadow as it descended upon a grazing herd of Ankylosaurus.

The audience emitted a collective gasp as the predator capered wildly behind Colonel Kemp, watching with horrid fascination as it attacked and feasted on one of the smaller armored dinosaurs. The Allosaurus flipped its prey onto its back with a deft flick of its powerful tail, then sank its snout of kitchen-knife teeth into the exposed soft underbelly. In triumph, the Allosaurus raised its bloody snout from the feast and stared coolly into the lens of the intruding camera, pausing for a terrible instant before returning to its meal.

Kemp keyed in a new sequence of shots, the interior as shot from an ornithopter traveling along the longitudinal axis of the cylindrical ship. “I need not tell you that the interior of the Mesozoic preserve is a dangerous place to be
—
even with adequate protection. When your documentary crews are shooting in the preserve, there will be very strict rules that must be obeyed. The IASA can protect you out there, but only if you follow the rules. This is very important. I don’t want any of you playing the idiot or the hero by wandering off on your own. The creatures in this self-contained world have hearty appetites.”

Kemp smiled, and a round of nervous laughter filled the small auditorium. He glanced down at Neville, seated between Kate Ennis and his nurse. The writer of more than four hundred books looked as though he was about to have a seizure. The man weaved back and forth slightly, and his face was very, very pale. His nurse was checking his portable LM equipment, making an attempt to be very discreet. No one else noticed, however, because of the constantly changing array of images from the holographic projector behind Colonel Kemp.

The aerial view of the Dragonstar’s interior revealed the varied geography of the Mesozoic world
—
its swamplands and rivers, lakes and plateaus, volcanic mountains overlooking lush jungle basins. The ornithopter-borne camera moved slowly toward the north end of the cylinder until the Barrier and the agrarian squares of land beyond were visible.

“Incredible as all this is, the spectacle is capped by the existence of the race of beings we call the Saurians. Centuries ago, their ancestors built their equivalent of the Great Wall of China, and you can see it in these shots, encircling the entire end of the cylinder. This wall, which they call the Barrier, keeps them separated from their low-life cousins.”

There was another ripple of laughter in the room as Kemp went on. “You will be spending a lot of time among the Saurians, and we have prepared a pamphlet on what we have discovered about their physiology and culture, which may help you to get along inside their lands. Please pick up one of the booklets on your way out
—
they’re on a stand by the exits.”

Kemp turned off the projectors. “That’s about it for now. We will be spending the next thirty-six hours here on Copernicus Base, then we will be shipping off to the Dragonstar itself. I have arranged for special tours of Copernicus Base and some lunar surface excursions for those of you who would like to take advantage of being up here on the Moon. Before we wrap this up, are there any questions?”

Phineas hated to add this to his presentation, but it was
de rigueur
in these kinds of situations. He knew the crowd would not let him escape easily. And so he was not surprised to see a forest of hands rising up out of the assembly.

“Yes, over in the corner, back row.”

A middle-aged man wearing a set of coveralls stood up. “You mentioned it being dangerous out in the Mesozoic Preserve. Just how safe are we out there?”

A murmur passed through the crowd. Kemp raised his hands for silence. “Very safe. Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about. You will be escorted everywhere by armed details who have logged long hours in the preserve.”

A young woman rose to her feet. “What’s this we heard about one of your armed guards being killed up there recently?”

Kemp was taken aback by the question. How did these people know about that already? He smiled slowly. “And where did you get that story from, might I ask?”

The young woman chuckled. “Colonel, I work for World Media Corporation. Stories are our business, remember?”

The group chuckled nervously.

He cleared his throat, retaining his composure. “A report did reach me while I was on Earth about such an incident. During a routine paleontological survey one of our guards got careless and paid the price. Let me remind you that this incident marks the first such accident since the research teams have been aboard the vessel.”

He paused for a moment as a chorus of reaction ran through the crowd, then pointed to another questioner. “Yes?”

A man in his thirties remained seated as he spoke. “I work for World Media too, Colonel. That was not an official press release she was talking about. It was a leak, as you probably know. My question is this: Was there any reason to keep that information classified?”

Kemp cleared his throat again. Damn these reporter types. He’d never had them on his base before, and now, though he’d invited them, he felt as though his territory had been invaded by a strange kind of enemy. He smiled at the question and tried to remain as cool as possible. “Of course there was a reason.” He paused to laugh easily. “It was to keep all you people from getting too scared and backing out. After all, I want this picture made, don’t I?”

Practically everyone laughed at the tension-breaking attempt at a joke, and Kemp was thankful. Other hands shot up, but he ignored them by waving off everybody. “All right, I have an appointment with the Joint Chiefs coming up, so I’m going to have to cut this short. Captain David Lowen, my liaison officer, is standing by to take over. He’s that handsome young blond guy in the corner. Dave, why don’t you come up here and wrap this thing up.”

As his liaison man approached the podium, Kemp looked out at the crowd and smiled his best media smile. “Thank you all for your attention. I’d like to wish you all good luck up there. Let’s make the world a film they’ll never forget.”

There was a burst of applause as Kemp waved and departed the podium. He gestured to his people in the first row to leave with him. Becky and Ian responded to the signal and got up from their seats.

Once the trio had exited the room and were out in the relative privacy of the corridor, Becky gave Phineas a playful punch on the shoulder. “Still as smooth as ever, aren’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“For a minute there, I thought those news sharks were going to get you, but you greased right out of that one. I feel sorry for Dave Lowen, though.”

“He can’t tell them anything he doesn’t know,” Ian said. “And I have a feeling Phineas picked his liaison officer very carefully.”

They all laughed as they walked along.

“I wasn’t kidding about the Joint Chiefs meeting, though,” Phineas said. “I’ve got to be there in a few minutes.”

“Are we invited?” Becky asked.

“Wish you were. It would certainly make it a bit more interesting. But I’m afraid not. Seems I missed the list meeting with the people from Management and Budget, and my ass’ll be in a crack if I don’t show up for this one.”

“Fudging around with a bunch of bureaucrats is the last thing I want to be doing right about now,” Coopersmith said. “I don’t know how you do it, Phineas.”

Kemp smiled at the two of them. “I’m afraid it comes with the territory. Well, I really must get on with it. See you at zero six hundred tomorrow in the launch briefing room.”

Becky and Ian nodded and said their good evenings to Kemp.

* * *

After the Colonel had disappeared down the long corridor, Ian looked at Becky and smiled. “ ‘It comes with the territory,’ indeed.”

Becky made a mock frown. “He was veddy serious, I assure you.”

They both laughed for a moment, then looked at each other. Neither one spoke, and as the silence became longer and more awkward, Becky felt an urge to say something. Looking at her chronometer, she smiled engagingly.

“Got any plans for the rest of the evening?”

Ian’s expression was inscrutable. He appeared to be thinking over all the implications of her question. After a pause he replied, “Well, no, I don’t really. But I know that I need to talk to you ... sooner or later.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” She was encouraged by his candor.

“Good. There are a lot of things that need to be said, Becky. I guess now’s as good a time as any to get them out.”

“Sounds like serious business,” she said, trying to lighten the mood of the conversation. “Why don’t we go down to the Village Pub and have a drink or two while we do all this heavy talking?”

“All right.” Ian’s expression now readable: he was smiling.

* * *

Not long after Becky Thalberg and Ian Coopersmith headed for the Copernicus Base watering hole, Captain Dave Lowen finished handling the documentary crew’s questions and dismissed the assembly. During the mad rush for the exits, amidst a rising drone of excited conversation, Dave Lowen searched out the panicky face of John T. Neville and his traveling nurse, Ms. Wilkins. He had been assigned by Kemp to play watchdog on the old guy until they shipped him up to the Dragonstar, and Dave wasn’t looking forward to the duty. Even though he hadn’t gotten much of a chance to talk to Neville, the writer seemed like fruit farm material.

As the crowd thinned out, Neville’s nurse helped him to his feet, carrying the portable LM units in her free hand. The odd couple approached Dave as he stood by the podium gathering up his notes and briefing sheets. Neville appeared to be exhibiting a combination of claustrophobia, anger, and general panic.