Larry Goes To Space (9 page)

“Interesting sort of sight for Kansas, wouldn’t you say?” Larry asked. The spacecraft were house-sized and wouldn’t look too out of place if they had driveways and garages, but they did look a bit odd hovering in the air about a foot over the top of the grass.

Gary tore his gaze away from the spaceships to stare at Larry. “I went to Army boot camp in California and saw some weird things in the land of fruits, nuts, and flakes. I think those … that … any one of those things — whatever the “H” it is — would look strange anywhere.” His eyes snapped back to the ships. His grip on the cattle chute was turning his knuckles white.

Larry laughed, “They are not an “it”. There are fourteen of them. And I imagine they wouldn’t look too out of place at Epcot Center in Florida, or even the Kennedy Space Center. I’m just imagining though, since I’ve never been to either place.”

“I’ve been to both of those places as a child,” Marcy said. “But I didn’t see anything like them at either of those places.” She never took her eyes off the Teumess spaceships. “Are they real UFOs?”

Larry said, “No. Actually, I think you would have to call them ULOs since they aren’t flying and have landed. That would be Unidentified Landed Objects, or maybe even just LOs since I have identified what they are. I’m pretty sure they’re real. When you get up close you can tell they aren’t made of plywood and glossy oil based paint.”

Gary said, “No.”

“No what?” Larry asked.

“I am not going to get close enough to see what they’re made off.”

Larry shrugged, “That’s your call, cousin. I can see why you’d need to stay back here because you’ve got a pregnant wife to protect and all.”

Gary snorted, but his eyes never left the ships. He did take one hand off the cattle chute and grab Marcy’s hand. He squeezed it tight, but he wasn’t about to splinter it like he was threatening to do with his other hand on the chute. “With all due respect to you and all my love to Marcy, having her here doesn’t have a dang thing to do with why I’m not going to get any closer to those things. And this is a might bit too close already.”

“They don’t seem to care.” Larry pointed to the cows grazing nearby.

“Yeah, but cows are stupid.”

Gary’s remark didn’t seem to offend any of the nearby cows. Maybe they were used to such comments by humans and maybe they just didn’t care. Whatever the cow’s reasoning, their “turn the other cheek” was a very mature attitude.

“Have you been inside? Did they kidnap you? Are you under mind control?” Marcy asked.

Larry answered the questions in order, “No. Not yet. I don’t think so, but if I was, how would I know? Look, I met the Teumess. They’re nice people. Not much like you or me, but nice anyway.”

He held up a hand about four feet off the ground. “They are about this tall, covered in red fur and look kind of fox-like. They need a bit of a hand with a problem they can’t handle themselves and I volunteered to go with them.”

Both Gary and Marcy tore their gaze away from the ships and looked at Larry.

“You freakin’ volunteered to go? Are you nuts?” Gary asked. As a measure of how emphatic he was, he really didn’t say “freak”, but actually used the other F word right in front of his pregnant wife, who — rather than look upset — looked as if she wholeheartedly agreed with her potty-mouthed husband. “That was rule number one in the Army. Never volunteer for anything.”

“I heard that. But, I knew this guy at college. He was an Air Force vet. He said that he always volunteered for the first thing offered up. He said he once volunteered and ended up giving blood and taking the day off. But the rest of his flight ended up doing K.P. for the day. He said he volunteered to help paint an officer’s office and the rest of his flight ended up scrubbing and painting trash dumpsters.”

Marcy said, “Scrubbing dumpsters isn’t like volunteering to go to space. You could end up as a center piece at their meal.”

Larry shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure they are rabid vegetarians, maybe even vegan. Still, I would rather volunteer for this than get wrapped up in what might happen if I don’t go and help.”

Larry had given considerable thought to what problems might be endangering the Teumess. Whatever it was, if they couldn’t handle it with their superior technology and they were being killed and eaten, then who was next on their adversary’s menu?

He wasn’t sure what one lone human could do, but if they thought he could help, he would. Even if Earth was never threatened, he liked Scooter, sort of. For an alien he was an okay kind of guy. He couldn’t hold his intoxicants worth beans, but nice enough. Besides, going on a space trip was sure a better excuse than he normally found for not mucking out the barn.

Larry said, “Oh, I’m not sure how long I’m going to be gone, but Gary, it would be great if you could find the time to muck out the barn for me. And I’m going to hold you both to your promise to keep this a secret.”

Marcy said, “Who are we going to tell? No one in their right mind is going to believe us. I see it with my own eyes and I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Good enough,” Larry said. “Actually, you two got enough trouble right now without being sent to the Big Crazy House. Well, the sun is up and the Teumess should be ready to open the door and hit the road, or the sky, or well — dog dung on a doorknob — we may shoot through a wormhole or straddle an alternate universe for all I know. You two kids have fun and I’ll see you when I get back.”

He didn’t want to add “if I get back”, but that’s what he thought as he walked to the spaceship. He tossed his backpack into the first open melted hatch he came to, thinking it might be the ship Scooter came in.

Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them!
(Jeremiah 9:2)

CHAPTER FIVE

LARRY looked around him. He was standing in a small airlock. It wasn’t much of an airlock. There were no knobs, readout displays, wheels, levers, or buttons. He recognized it as an airlock because it was just a small room between two heavy doors, or rather hatches. The whole thing looked exactly like the mudroom between his parent’s porch and their living room, except there wasn’t any mud, muddy boots, or mud covered coveralls, plus there weren’t any hat hooks, umbrella stands, or coat racks. Not to mention, at his parent’s house he would have been greeted by two yappy little, mop-like dogs and by Grandpa, probably sans underwear … again.

Both hatches were wide open. He wasn’t an expert on spacecraft airlocks, but he assumed the atmosphere and atmospheric pressure must be similar on the two planets. Scooter said the air was breathable for both species, but if he was the captain, he would still have kept the doors working in series instead of in tandem. The doors must seal tight as there was no evidence of grooves in the floor or walls, as he would’ve expected to see.

He based his expectation of grooves on his years of extensive experience in extraterrestrial vehicles from bad science fiction movies. Most of those movies were written by humans more interested in fiction than science; more interested in entertainment than true speculation. So far, the Teumess would have bored any movie-goer used to watching aliens who looked more like half-rotten zombie troll nightmares than curious woodland creatures from the sequel to
Bambi
.

He dragged his gear into the spaceship hallway and stood alone. He looked both left and right along the corridor, but there didn’t appear to be anyone home. The stillness felt exactly like going into a church on a Thursday morning. You expected someone to be there, the building was open and felt occupied, but there wasn’t anyone around. Not that Larry had much experience in going into churches, not on a Thursday or even a Sunday for that matter.

He stretched out a hand and touched the walls — bulkheads. He was going to have to remember to go full-on nautical with his terms. Nautical terms didn’t came natural to a Kansas farm boy, but he’d read enough books to know what was what. Bulkheads, decks, fore, aft, port, starboard, ladders, and hatches were terms he knew, but had little use for on a farm. He could have called his barn door a hatch, but Dad would have thought he had taken up raising chickens.

He rapped his knuckles on the interior bulkhead. It rapped a pleasant thunk, not at all like trying to hammer on the outside hull. The material didn’t look any different than the exterior hull, but it wasn’t configured for noise dampening.

He looked behind him. The hatches were still un-melted. He looked through the airlock and across the pasture. He waved to Gary and Marcy, still standing at the cattle chute. He was sure a wave was appropriate, as it was between humans. Gary waved back, somewhat hesitantly, somewhat by remote reaction, but following typical human convention.

Gary would have understood a Vulcan salute, as he would’ve easily understood a rude, middle-finger single-digit gesture, but neither would have been any more appropriate than Marcy’s response. Marcy looked ill. She bent over and retched into the grass. She heaved a few times with such violence Gary tore his eyes away from the spaceship to console his wife.

Larry wondered if the view of him disappearing into a spaceship was distressing to his new first-cousin-in-law or if she was having a simple bout of morning sickness. Neither reason was a particular concern to him. He was more concerned that someone or something would come by and shut the exterior door before they took off.

He realized they might not have to shut the hatch. Maybe they had force fields to keep out the empty vacuum of space, or to keep the thin, delicate atmosphere in the ship from leaking into space. Either way, un-melting the hatch seemed to make more sense. Whatever their typical practice, having a completely sealed spaceship was a good thing to have if a person planned to travel between worlds.

In his excitement, he’d forgotten about the translator machine. It still hovered a foot above the grass in the field. The Teumess hadn’t brought it in. He knew Gary would retrieve it and probably become as wealthy as the guy who invented fire, but he decided he might need to talk to his hosts, assuming there would be talking between probing sessions. Maybe the Teumess had another translator machine and maybe they didn’t.

Larry hopped down to the grass. He grabbed the little DNA unit sitting on top of the interpreter and tossed it through the airlock to land next to his backpack and sleeping bag. He dragged the machine to the main hatch by yanking on the leash. Leading the translator machine was exactly like leading Ol’ Bucky around by a leash. You could get where you were going, but a few sideways leaps were always required and a few fancy dance steps were necessary to keep the leash from wrapping around your knees.

The translator was more than willing to go where Larry wanted it to, but it seemed to be a bit more eager to get there than even his tractor would have been. It took a big dip at every little dip in the uneven ground around the open hatch and blew about with every small gust of air. It took some doing, but Larry finally got it aligned to the hatch.

He couldn’t figure how to get it up, it hovered about a foot above the ground, but that didn’t exactly match the height of the hatch. The spaceships were hovering at about a foot above the ground, but the main hatch was a foot or so above that. Larry wrapped his arms around the machine and tried brute force. That always seemed to work when he tried to get Ol’ Bucky into the bath, biting notwithstanding.

The translator didn’t budge.

Larry was frustrated. How could a machine blow about with each wisp of wind, but not move when he put all of his back and thigh muscles into it? Even when he kept his back straight, lifting with his legs, exactly like Doug Rickenhauser hadn’t done at Racine’s, he couldn’t get the little machine to rise.

He stepped back and blew on the machine. It didn’t move.

He grabbed the leash and yanked. The machine danced sideways.

Larry tugged the leash, bringing the interpreter back to the hatch. He pulled up on the leash and the little machine rose sedately to the hatch level and floated inside. He leaped up behind it.

He looked around and couldn’t see any manual hatch release. The bulkheads were smooth and soft. They weren’t metal. They weren’t wood. They weren’t carpet, hanging tapestries, or compressed cardboard. As far as he could see along the corridor, the bulkheads were one unbroken color of some unknown material.

He wondered if all of the controls were on the bridge. He couldn’t imagine designing a spacecraft without emergency hatch controls, but he hadn’t been consulted on the design of this particular craft. He also doubted the Teumess were going to let him go banging around on the bridge, poking at the controls and accidently activating the self-destruct.

Larry shouldered his backpack and sleeping bag. They fit comfortably on his shoulders. The weight was familiar as he liked camping, hunting, and fishing. If he hadn’t enjoyed outdoor activities he wouldn’t be a farmer. He was sure he could have earned a degree at college for anything other than agribusiness. He could have been a computer programmer, a teacher, or even a doctor. None of those professions would have afforded him the opportunity to spend his days outside. Now that he thought about it, a degree in astrophysics might come in handy right about now.

Pulling the translator behind him by its leash was easier than dragging Ol’ Bucky along on a camping trip. On the smooth deck, it followed along like a well-behaved puppy, if there ever had been such a thing. Puppies, by their very nature, were not well behaved. It took a great deal of training to bring a puppy from its normal not well behavior to the level of Ol’ Bucky’s not well behavior.

Not having a guide, or even one of those “you are here” maps, Larry turned left. He thought that was to port, but knew that would depend on whether he had just come in the back hatch or the front hatch. He turned left because he had once read that most people, when entering a store, a sports stadium, or amusement park almost always turned to the right. He made it a habit to obstinately turn the opposite way most people went.

Larry didn’t bother looking for light switches along the way. The lights seemed to turn on as he got close and off when he was out of the immediate area. He wasn’t such a rube that he didn’t understand motion detectors, a position that most motion detectors found highly practical. Try as he might, Larry couldn’t see any device that alerted the lights, the corridor, or any recognizable detector to his presence.

The Teumessian motion detectors would have chuckled at his inability to find their receptors, but they didn’t have much of a sense of humor. This, if someone thought about it long enough, would be a good thing in motion detectors that controlled the lights.

He reached a corner of the corridor without finding another hatch. He made a right turn and walked to the next corner. He made another right turn and walked to the next corner. He made another right turn and walked to the corner. He made another right turn and walked down the corridor to the midpoint, all without finding a hatch. Unless his sense of direction was befuddled, he had reached the point where he started.

The airlock hatches were gone. A stairway — he knew these were called ladders on ships — opened on the opposite bulkhead where the airlock hatch had been. It led up to the next level. He looked up but didn’t see anyone or anything.

He slid his hands along the bulkhead where the airlock hatch should’ve been, but he couldn’t see or feel any opening, crack, or crease. The seal was perfect. He decided at least he didn’t have to worry about all his air leaking out into space before they got to where they were going. He couldn’t see any mechanism to open or close the airlocks.

Larry looked both ways along the corridor. There hadn’t been any hatches or openings in any bulkhead when he’d made his round robin walk, assuming you could call it round when it was a perfect square. But he wouldn’t recognize a hatch if all of them were like the airlock hatches. If the length of the corridor was any indication, the size of this spaceship was a few hundred feet larger than his house. It did have a second story, where his farmhouse did not.

He thought the square corridor enclosed a central room on this level. There must also be smaller rooms around the outside of the corridor. The outside rooms couldn’t be much larger than a small bedroom or a large walk-in closet, unless they were using magic where the inside of the spaceship rooms were bigger than their outside dimensions.

Just for good measure, Larry walked around the squared circle corridor again. He ended up back at the ladder going up to the next level. He hadn’t seen any indication of any opening, any hatch, any porthole, any Teumess, or even any other intra-galactic creature. He hadn’t even seen a dust bunny in a corner, and that was very unlike his hallway at home.

He looked up through the opening to the deck above. From what he could see, upstairs was much like where he was. He walked up the ladder. He had to stretch to reach the next step. It had certainly not been designed to human specifications.

He wondered about that. The Teumess were smaller than he was. At least, the Teumessians he had seen were smaller than he was. For all he knew, he’d been captured by a group of pygmy Teumess. Still, their legs were much shorter, making the steps much more difficult for them than him. Much stronger leg muscles might explain the difference.

Larry glanced around him as his head rose above deck level. The corridor was much like the one below. It looked shorter on this floor as if the central room was much smaller than the central room below, with larger rooms around the outer perimeter.

“Hello?” he called out. “Permission to come aboard?” He realized it was a little late to call out, but they had been expecting him. Otherwise they wouldn’t have left the hatches open for him.

“Savage carnivore on level two,” he shouted. “I’m not hungry, but just letting you know.”

There wasn’t any answer. The translator yipped and yapped, but there still wasn’t any answer. He did hear the scurry of feet around the corner ahead, but he was a guest and didn’t want to go chasing after a scared Teumessian. After all, he couldn’t catch Ol’ Bucky unless the old dog wanted to get caught and he imagined the Teumessians were faster than Ol’ Bucky.

He clumped down the corridor. The clumping was deliberate. He wanted the Teumess to know he was coming. It felt like walking down the hallway of a stranger’s home, looking for the bathroom, uncomfortable, but necessary.

He made the circuit around the central room and confirmed, to himself if no one else, that the central room was much smaller on the second floor than the first. He was beyond surprised when he reached his starting point only to find that the ladder going down was gone. Even the opening in the deck had completely disappeared without any evidence it had ever been there.

Larry decided this spaceship was not at all like Nancy. She’d disappeared, but she left more evidence behind than he could count. Clothes, hair products, odd bits of human existence always seemed to float into his field of vision at odd times. He would swear that he had all her stuff out of the bathroom when in a flash of light he would spot a comb or barrette stuck in some corner. Here on this spaceship, when something disappeared, it was gone.