DS02 Night of the Dragonstar (4 page)

WHEN COLONEL
Phineas Kemp awoke in a hotel room, he was aware of two things. First of all, he had a hangover, which was unusual.

Second, it wasn’t his hotel room.

He exhaled a groan and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the bright morning light seeping around the drapes. Slowly he groped for the memory of last night, buried somewhere in the midst of his headache.

Let’s see ...

Oh yes, the tipsy cab ride into rustic old Georgetown, to a small, relaxed French bistro with a cozy fireplace. Wonderful meal of some kind ... lots of wine. A vague walk along the C & O canal. Talks of old times, old dreams. A trip up in the elevator of the Four Seasons hotel ...

All with Rebecca Thalberg.

“Becky,” he said and rolled over. Dark hair sprayed on the white linen of the pillow beside him. The splendid curve of a shoulder peeped from above the line of the blanket.

Oh my God, thought Kemp. Now I remember.

The sensations flooded back. It had all been so familiar
—
the touch and smell of her, the sound of her voice in his ear. They’d been lovers for so long, it had been so easy, with the numbing influence of the wine, to slide back into the old feelings and needs.

Or, at the very least, the old motions of the same, which they had acted out last night with a passionate vengeance.

His movements awakened her. She sat up. The covers slid off, exposed the vaselike qualities of her naked back, perhaps Phineas Kemp’s third favorite sight in the universe.

“Oh,” he sighed, turning away.

“Well, good morning, Phineas. You want something from room service?”

“How about a gun?”

“For me or yourself?”

“Never mind. Coffee, juice ... hell, Becky, you know what I like.”

She made the call.

“I’d better put something on,” she said as she hit the comm’s off button.

“Yeah,” Kemp said.

She walked to the bathroom, and Kemp utilized all his willpower not to watch. It brought up too many memories, and the memories brought up the pain he just wasn’t willing to face.

When she came out, wearing a bathrobe, he was already in shirt and pants.

She dried her face with a towel. “Well, Phineas, do you want to talk before or after your coffee?”

“I had a wonderful time last night,” he muttered, going to the window and looking out.

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“I’m also furious at you. And myself. We shouldn’t have let that happen. Damn it, Becky, we’re too grown up to let that kind of thing happen between us.”

She sat on the bed, and there was a long moment of silence. “Ah, Phineas, I can always count on you to be such a comfort.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He turned on her angrily. “You’re the one who was screwing Ian Coopersmith in the urgency of need and survival. And you know, I might have gotten past that. But no, you had to add insult to injury. And now you come back with your tail between your legs, wanting me back.”

“Tail between ...” she said, getting angry. “Look, Phineas, last night was just as much a mistake for me as it was
—”

“Oh yeah? You know I’m in love with Mikaela Lindstrom, and you drag me off to a romantic evening and drug me up and ... You sure didn’t act like it was a mistake last night. I’ve never heard you carry on like that before. What were you doing, imagining yourself making it again with Coopersmith in the primeval jungle?”

“Shut your goddamned stupid mouth!” she screamed at him and then helplessly began to cry.

His head pounded furiously, but his anger was spent. He took a deep breath, then sat beside her. “Look, Becky, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean that.” He put his hand on her back.

“Don’t touch me!” she said, face buried in her hands. “Just get away, Phineas, please.”

“Becky, I guess I just haven’t dealt with the pain and the anger properly. And I
—”

“Just save it, Phineas, okay? I just don’t want to hear it. I’ve heard your rationalizations for years, your explanations, your goddamned self-serving logic. Just get away from me now.”

Room service chose that fortunate moment to interrupt. Kemp poured them both coffee, adding just cream to Becky’s.

“Here. “

“Thanks,” she said, taking the cup.

“He’s back with his wife, you know,” Kemp said, sitting in a chair. “Wants to get away from this whole business. Won’t cooperate with me or anybody. Looks like he’s even thinking of quitting the service. Just wants a quiet life now. Get back with the wife and family. Still a nice place, London.”

“Phineas, Ian Coopersmith and I ... well, I told you before. That’s over. That’s over, we’re over. But there are ...” She sipped her coffee. “After images. Like echoes of a song.”

“And so you figured you’d have a sing-along with me, Becky?”

Her dark eyes blazed at him. “I had no intention of seducing you, Phineas Kemp. Besides, you didn’t seem to mind very much.”

“Too, too true,” he said, sipping at the coffee, letting the steam wisp up into his face. “So there’s been no one else since Coopersmith?”

Becky shook her head. “I’m too knotted up inside, I guess.”

“Becky, it would be different if it weren’t for Mikaela. She means a lot to me.
In
a different way than you. Not better.”

“Don’t explain, I know.”

“And ... well, I try to keep my promises.”

“You going to tell her?”

“I don’t know. If it seems right at the time, I will.”

“She’ll understand, Phineas.”

“Yeah. But will I?”

“You just won’t give anyone a break, will you?” she said softly. “Not even yourself.”

“I have ... responsibilities.”

“Yes. Responsibilities.” She got up and picked up her breakfast. “Better eat yours before it gets cold, Phineas. Then you can shower and be about your ‘responsibilities,’ and we’ll just pretend this was a little visit back in time, a sideslip ... and forget about it. It never happened. We’re just partners in this particular enterprise of yours—nothing more, nothing less. I’ll do my best in whatever way I can to see that your documentary is the finest possible recording of what happened to us—not personally, of course. And you can discharge these holy ‘responsibilities’ of yours.”

She proceeded to eat her pancakes.

Kemp went to get his plate. He looked at her, her face turned away from him, and there were things he wanted to say that he didn’t have the language for, feelings inside that he wanted to let her know about that seemed so foolish when he thought about them. As usual, he just pushed them back to whatever unknown parts of him they’d emerged from and started getting some starch into himself to soak up some of his hangover.

After a quick and silent breakfast, Becky got up to change. “So,” she said, all softness cleansed from her tone. “You can’t get Ian for your show. That’s too bad. He’s very important.”

“Very important, yes,” Kemp agreed, wiping syrup off his lips with a napkin. “And I’ve implored him. But he’s adamant. ‘I just need a lot of time to myself, Colonel,’ he told me. ‘Yours is the only offer I’m even marginally inclined to take, and God bloody knows I’ve had my share of offers. Try me again in a year or so, maybe. I’ve been through too much.’ I just can’t figure it out, Becky. It’s his duty. To mankind.”

“I think Ian has done his duty to mankind, and right now he just wants to do his duty to himself.”

“Maybe if you talked to him,” Phineas said, brightening. “Maybe if we both bothered him, we can at least talk him into taping an interview. I could get my contacts at the BBC to do it. Naturally, I wish he’d come back to the Dragonstar so we’d have the proper backdrop, but I’ll take what I can get. Will you, Becky? It’s very important to me. Just give him a call.”

Becky shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Since I’m on the team now, I’ II be a team player.”

Kemp was shocked at how readily she agreed.

God, he thought. She really wants to see him again, and won’t even admit it to herself.

“So,” Becky said from the bathroom. “Tonight’s your big dinner with that lady producer. What else have you got on tap?”

“Oh, an appointment with the President, that’s all. And I’m going to have to get through it with this hangover.”

“Pardon me, Mr. President, while I vomit on your shoe? Come on, you’re Colonel Phineas Ironhead Kemp, Space Commander. Heroes don’t get hangovers, and when they do, they can take them like men.”

“You know, I never could stand your sarcasm, Becky.”

“Right. I’m so good at it. Just a lot of practice, I suppose. And a wonderful target.”

“Oh, yes,” said Kemp, remembering. “And I’ve also got this wonderful idea for the show that I have to see if I can pull off. You know how I’ve always been a real science fiction buff.”

“The nuts and bolts variety, yes.”

“Well, how does this sound, Becky? For our live transmission from the Dragonstar, showing the Saurians to the world for the very first time, we include an actual live encounter between our reptilian allies and the greatest living science fiction author on Earth, a man esteemed by all countries for his accomplishments and his prophetic powers, a man who was one of the very first to dream about the possibility of all this happening.”

“Who would that be, Phineas? You know I prefer historical novels.”

“My favorite writer of all time, John T. Neville.”

“My God, Phineas, isn’t he a thousand years old?”

“No, only just short of a hundred.”

“But a trip into space ... Wouldn’t it be a health risk?”

“No, we’ll take care of him. You know we’ve got the most advanced health facilities anywhere. Besides, the guy will absolutely jump at the chance. I mean, after years and years of writing and envisioning aliens, to actually set foot on a spaceship would be the crowning moment of the man’s career. Why, I bet we could even get him to write one of his nonfiction books about the whole experience.”

“Sound like a good idea to me, Phineas. And this way you get to meet the nice old guy.”

“Right. I’m going to call him today. I think I feel better already, Becky. Sorry I was so upset before.”

“I’m sure if we survived two years together and a spaceship full of dinosaurs, plus a hijacked freighter full of TWC terrorists, then we can survive one more night in the sack, Phineas.”

Phineas sighed and went to look for his shoes.

“GODDAMN
friggin’ Commies!” John T. Neville said. He walked over to his desk, pulled open a drawer, and took out his old Marine service revolver. His usually sharp eyes were bleary as he stared at the wall. Unsteadily, he aimed his gun and pressed the trigger. The gun barked, kicking in his hand. His LM devices sounded an alarm. “Goddamn enemies of freedom! Well, we’ll fight you on the DMZ and we’ll fight you in space, and we’ll fight
—”
Kablam!
“We’ll fight you until we drop. I see you, Bischoff, you pinko! You showed them the way to my home.”
Kablam!
“Well, you’ll not get Long Jack”
—
kablam!
—
“Neville!”

The apparitions wavered and disappeared. Neville blinked as he wavered a bit unsteadily himself, the smoke from the shots rising up in the room, alerting the smoke alarm, which added its deeper alarm to the strident buzz of the LM system.

Neville shook his fist defiantly toward the ceiling. “You goddamn Russkies are droppin’ the big one, huh? Well you’re not gonna get me! I’ve got a fallout shelter that can look hell in the eye. And when the winds blow away the radiation, I’m comin’ for you, personally, me and my Freehold, just like in my book. And then—”

The study door was flung open: Nurse Jane Wilkins stood there aghast, with Susie goggling over her matronly shoulder.

“Mr. Neville!” Wilkins cried. “Sit down immediately. And put that gun down!”

Shocked by the sudden arrival of these familiar faces, Neville rocked a moment, then sat down hard in his composing chair. “Commies,” he mumbled. “Everywhere.”

Nurse Wilkins advanced upon him in a huff. “Don’t worry, Susie,” she said to the woman hanging back in the doorway. “We keep blanks in the gun. No harm done.” She took the weapon away from Neville, then checked his machines and made the proper biofeedback adjustments. Neville immediately relaxed, drowsing a bit. “Good. We don’t have to give him any shots. He hates shots. “

“What happened?” Susie asked.

Nurse Wilkins glanced about, her eyes lighting upon the nearly empty bottle of fluid in the Jack Daniel’s bottle Neville had been sipping. “Mr. Neville!” she demanded harshly. “Have you been letting your vitamin fluid ferment again?” She took the bottle and sniffed it. “No. Just a little too much vitamin stimulation. No harm done. He must be getting very excited about what he’s writing here.”

“It’s about the Dragonstar,” Susie said enthusiastically. “He’s doing it for
Omni.
It looks like he’s almost finished.

“He’s such a dear. So wonderfully old-fashioned.” Susie turned to the printout from the CRT and found the place where she had stopped reading earlier.

“Colonel Phineas Kemp, understandably shocked by the massacre of the
Heinlein
landing party,” the manuscript continued, “ordered mission commanders Fratz and Bracken to remain on board their ship and not attempt entry into the alien vessel until a follow-up expedition could join them. He immediately began organizing a second team to intercept Artifact One. The deep-space vessel
Goddard
was selected for the mission, with Kemp as commander.

“From all indications that I have received from the IASA, it was at about this time that information concerning Artifact One was leaked to the Third World Confederation, that pack of uncivilized wolves.

“As the
Goddard
was prepared for launch, various scientists and engineers speculated about the immense alien ship, which had assumed the informal code name Dragonstar, since it seemed to be a starship filled with ‘the Dragons of Eden,’ a name popularized in the twentieth century by my esteemed scientific colleague Dr. Carl Sagan, a somewhat obscure name these days since his conversion to Fundamental Christianity and his renunciation of all previous work in the ‘Godless aspect’ of science.

“The most popular theory concerning the vessel was that it was an alien specimen ship which visited our solar system approximately 180 million years ago, collecting a vast sample of the flora and fauna of the Mesozoic Era. Leaving our system, the theory said, there must have been an accident that either killed or disabled the crew, or disabled the main engines. In this way the Dragonstar became trapped in an eccentric, cometlike orbit that took it around the sun once every 210 years.

“Meanwhile, inside the gigantic cylindrical ship, Coopersmith and Thalberg struggled to survive, unable to find their way back to the entrance hatch.”

The press had a good time with this, uncovering the fact that Rebecca Thalberg had a sexual relationship with Ian Coopersmith at that time. Of course they got it on. And so what? Good-lookin’ kids, full of nature’s own liquor, hormones, in a steamy environment filled with dangers. Who could blame them?

“And don’t feel sorry for Phineas Kemp. From what I’ve heard, he immediately felt an itch for a paleontologist aboard the
Goddard
named Dr. Mikaela Lindstrom
—
a damned fine-formed woman, from the pictures I’ve seen. Anyway, the
Goddard
crew entered the alien ship and set up a base camp around the entrance hatch, using a force-field fence to keep predatory dinosaurs at bay. Lindstrom began a detailed study of the creatures, while the crew’s engineers began joining outrigger impulse engines to the Dragonstar, with which they could break the immense cylinder from its cometary path and guide it into a stable L-5 orbit near the Earth. From that position, scientists will study the vessel at their leisure, and the IASA can protect the vessel from the Chinese and the TWC.

“There was one problem with this strategy, however. A ‘sleeper’ agent for the TWC, Ross Canter, had managed to be placed on the
Goddard
mission, and at the appropriate time he sabotaged the expedition’s communications gear, cutting it off from all contact with Copernicus Base.

“Almost simultaneously, a group of TWC terrorists led by Marcus Jashad hijacked an IASA mining vessel, the
Andromache,
that was parked in lunar orbit. The TWC ruthlessly murdered the mining ship’s crew, except for its captain, Francis Welsh.

“Filled with one hundred trained guerrilla fighters, the
Andromache
headed out to intercept the Dragonstar. Control of the alien vessel and its secrets of advanced technology
—
including its stardrive
—
would give the TWC the controlling force in world affairs.

“The actual order of the events have not been fully documented,” the narration continued. “However, certain definite facts have been made available to the press. After many encounters with the local wildlife, Coopersmith and Thalberg reached their destination, the end of the cylinder, where they hoped they would find a passage to the control section of the mammoth ship. Instead they found a wall isolating the last fraction of the interior from the dangerous carnivores in the wild. Guarding this wall were what amounted to intelligent dinosaurs, popularly known these days as ‘Sauries.’ Speculation is that these creatures evolved within the cylinder from the two-legged dinosaurs called (Saurornithoides.) Slightly more than 2.5 meters tall, they are fairly smooth-skinned with vestigial scaling. They stand totally erect, possessing definite shoulders and arm musculature and have three-fingered hands with opposable thumbs. Their necks are thick and longish, supporting a birdlike head. Their faces are pointed, but there is no beak, and their large green eyes are positioned stereoscopically under defined brow ridges. Their skulls are large and possess sizable brain capacity.

“With a combination of luck and intelligence, the stranded engineer and doctor established communication with the species, which they found to be organized very much along the lines of the government posited in Plato’s
Republic
—
workers,
soldiers, and scientist-kings. A breakthrough was established with one of these rulers, a ‘Saurian’ they dubbed Thesaurus, who had access to a passageway in the wall between the Mesozoic environment and the control section of the ship
—
and seemingly had suffered radiation burns as payment for the knowledge he had attained.

“Colonel Phineas Kemp soon found the lost pair, and with their help began discovering the fascinating secrets of the Saurian race
—
including a dioramalike teaching device left by the aliens who had constructed the ship, predicting the arrival of creatures from another world, and providing evidence that the aliens had molded the structure of life on earth. I shall return to this later with scientific musings of my own.

“Exploration of the Dragonstar ended with the arrival of the
Andromache
and its treacherous cargo. The TWC army’s attempt to take over the Dragonstar failed, thanks to the cooperation of the Saurians and the hunger of the local wildlife, with which Jashad and his compatriots failed to reckon.

“Jashad himself was killed after discovering that the main intention of his mission
—
to own a stardrive
—
was fruitless. Dr. Robert Jakes had discovered that, from all signs, the Dragonstar had no stardrive; it was, in fact, what amounted to a virtual test tube for the aliens dabbling in prospective life for the planet Earth
—
and not, as they had thought, a specimen ship.

“The Dragonstar was placed in a stable orbit. The announcement of its discovery and arrival was made soon after by the IASA, and the rest is generally well documented.

“However, it is the importance of the Dragonstar and its contents in relation to the future that I wish to discuss here, and with this in mind, some scientific facts should be brought into focus.

“Like the hero of my novel
The Sons of
Suns,
we suddenly find ourself in a new universe. What we had assumed before ...”

Susie was distracted from her reading by the sounds of Neville rousing from his beta-wave induced sleep, brought back up by Nurse Wilkins at the LM keyboard.

“There we go, Johnny boy,” she said. “I told you not to drink so much of your megavitamin punch. Too much of a good thing is sometimes very bad.”

Neville rubbed his full mane of gray hair foggily and grouched, “I wish you wouldn’t patronize me, woman. I just got a little too excited about what I was writing, and that’s rare these days.”

“All the same, please do be more careful in the future.”

“This is really fascinating,” Susie enthused, rattling the paper in the printer.

“Yes, and I want to get back to finishing it,” Neville snarled. “Now you two skedaddle.”

The phone rang. Nurse Wilkins picked it up.

“I think you’ll want to take this, Johnny,” she said to the old man. “Your secretary put the call through
—
it’s from Colonel Kemp.”

“What could he want?” Susie wondered.

Neville managed a smug smile as he reached for the receiver. “Good afternoon, Colonel Kemp. I was wondering when you’d call.”