Origins: The Reich (36 page)

“
Can I interest
you in a friendly game of chess while we wait?” Tonwen asked his captain.  Before answering, Hastelloy looked around the metallic confines of the Nexus chamber within the Sphinx.  Gallono was working to set up the next monthly scan pulse to accompany the full moon through a new broadcast location.  Valnor busied himself with monitoring television broadcasts in the United States.  He concluded there was nothing requiring his immediate attention besides Tonwen.

“Set up the game,” Hastelloy answered.  Tonwen went to retrieve the original chess set Valnor carved out of leftover granite stones used to build the Great Pyramid four thousand years earlier from a nearby storage locker.  Tonwen arranged the white pieces in front of himself, leaving Hastelloy to command the dark.

“While I have your undivided attention, can I hear your thoughts on where we now stand with these humans and their fractured Neo Scale development path?” Tonwen innocently asked.

Over the last ten years since the NSA turned on him and Tonwen to recover the Alpha craft in Roswell, New Mexico, Hastelloy had managed to dodge this discussion.  The four remaining crewmembers of the Lazarus kept to themselves near the Nexus chamber.  With the Alpha threat now eliminated, Hastelloy was content to monitor rather than participate in world events.  He watched Tonwen open the game by moving his king’s pawn forward two spaces, and decided it was time to address the festering need to have this conversation.

“I think it is a pointless debate considering we had no choice in the matter.  Either we revealed ourselves to President Truman to enlist his nation’s help, or the Alpha would’ve conquered this planet and destroyed the Nexus.  At least the solution I came up with revealed our existence to only one man,” Hastelloy answered as he countered Tonwen’s opening move.

“One agency,” Tonwen corrected as the two took turns moving their pieces around the board.  “One extremely powerful, covert agency dedicated to hunting us down; an agency which, by the way, also now operates above even presidential authority.”

“We can manage that situation without much difficulty,” Hastelloy declared.  “We know who they are after all.  They, on the other hand lack even the foggiest clue who we are or where we reside.”

“Perhaps, but just like when Captain Diaz and his crew made first contact with the Alpha, these beings are now aware of what is possible.  It is worse than that,” Tonwen amended.  “Diaz left the Alpha home world without sharing any untimely advancements.  We have now imparted upon these humans specific knowledge on spaceflight, complex metal alloys, the concept of computers, and thermonuclear weapons.”

“None of that even addresses the fact that the Americans successfully recovered a crashed Alpha escape pod along with four alien bodies,” Tonwen went on.  “By definition, this planet is now a Neo Scale developmental time bomb just waiting to go off.”

Before delivering his verbal response, Hastelloy gave the chessboard a careful review to confirm his expectation.  They had each played sixteen moves, and Tonwen was sticking rigidly to the ideal ‘book moves’ of the Ruy Lopez opening. 

When Hastelloy played Gallono, he could count on a free-flying game from the commander because he was too impatient to study and memorize the ideal chess opening sequences.  Tonwen was just the opposite.  The science officer would follow a memorized line all the way to the end game of king versus king if he could.  Hastelloy was not about to let him though.

“Your assertion requires a person to believe that there is but one developmental pace and path for a civilized society; the Neo Scale’s path,” Hastelloy said as he did the unthinkable and captured Tonwen’s knight with his far more valuable rook.  “I happen to have trouble holding such a vast collection of beings, hundreds of billions of people over a civilizations existence, to such a rigid and predetermined path of development.  Real life is too unpredictable, and personalities too varied for that.”

Tonwen eagerly took Hastelloy’s rook out of the game and commented back with confidence, “Venturing from the ideal path results in disaster, like in this game for you now.”

Three more game moves progressed in silence until Hastelloy unleashed an attack, which resulted in a reciprocal knight for rook exchange, rendering the game even once more with a king, queen, and three pawns per side.  “The situation can be brought back into balance with proper planning and execution.”

“It was a risky gambit,” Tonwen objected as he was forced to look at the game board with renewed focus before making his next move.

“Yes it was,” Hastelloy conceded as he stormed forward with his three pawns and ultimately sacrificed his queen to win the game.  “By the book this game should have been a draw, but I was here to turn it toward my favor, even though one of those moves was not by the book.”

Hastelloy went on, “That is exactly why our situation here on Earth is different than Captain Diaz and his crew making first contact with the Alpha.  After just fifty years, they left that world alone on a Neo Scale trajectory that had been warped.  Whereas we are still here on Earth managing things so that the Neo Scale comes back into balance,” Hastelloy concluded with a good sportsmanlike handshake offered across the table.

Tonwen sat there in stunned silence contemplating the captain’s words.  He let out a rare laugh and grasped Hastelloy’s outstretched hand.  “Now be honest, you have had that series of game moves worked out to go along with that little lesson for a while now.  Have you not?”

“I’ve been known to plan ahead from time to time,” Hastelloy responded with a cheeky grin.

“Well played, sir.  The only flaw I see in your thought process is that you are always so willing to sacrifice your queen in order to win the game.”

“It’s always for the greater good,” Hastelloy answered and was prepared to elaborate further, but Valnor cut him short.

“Captain, the President’s speech is about to begin.”

With that, all four men huddled around the flexible display screen rolled out across the table.  On it stood the youthful President Kennedy at a podium, beginning his address to an audience filling every seat of a university football stadium.

“We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the great scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation’s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole. Despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter.

Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity.

Last month electric lights, telephones, automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin, television and nuclear power.  And now, if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, and new dangers. Surely, the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

If this capsulated history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space…

…There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too…

...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it.”

When the president concluded his groundbreaking and forward thinking address, Tonwen leaned over to whisper into Hastelloy’s ear.  “In boasting about that rapid human advancement I noticed that he failed to give us any credit.  It must have been an oversight, because you know that he knows the truth.  Every president from here on out will know the truth.”

Frank endured the
heat for as long as he could.  When the skin on his bare shoulders began to smolder and crack, he knew it was time.  Pressing his shirtless back against the roof while using his legs to push up was out of the question, the metal was too hot.

“Lie on your backs, plant your feet against the roof and pretend you are at the gym using the hip sled,” Frank instructed.  In the process of repositioning, he grazed his right arm against the side.  A soft sizzle and accompanying aroma of burnt flesh hit him moments before his reflexes pulled the arm away.  He forced the pain aside to focus on the task at hand, or rather foot.

“Push!” Frank bellowed and felt like he was attempting to dislodge Mount Everest.  The load got noticeably easier when Alex and Professor Russell added their strength.  Together they managed to tip an edge up six inches.  The rush of fresh cool air felt like an arctic blast compared to being under the copper kettle.

Frank managed to get his legs up to full extension and felt confident he could now carry the load of two people.  “Alex, slide out there and push those stones back into tipping position.”

“You sure you can handle it, because if you drop it while I am under the lip, I’ll be half the girl I used to be.”

“Just be quick about it,” Professor Russell said.

Alex retracted her legs, and rolled out from under the overturned sarcophagus.  Frank soon heard the grinding of stone scraping across stone until she gave them the all clear.  “Okay, let it down.”

Frank lowered his legs until the lip of the sarcophagus rested on the stones.  He attempted to pull his feet down but found he was unable to remove his feet from the ceiling.  At the same time, his feet felt like they were on fire, causing him to reach up, untie the laces of his boots and yank his feet out.  To his amazement, the shoes remained attached to the ceiling, with the rubber soles of his hiking boots bonded with the cooling metal.

Now shirtless and shoeless, Frank rolled out from under the copper coffin to lie facing straight up with Alex and Professor Russell standing over him.  Beyond their heads and smiling faces. Frank saw a sky filled with vibrant, twinkling stars.  The actual stars this time, not the seashells and jewels impeded in the ceiling before.  The bombs had completely blasted apart a manmade hill with a volume of over one-hundred twenty million cubic feet of packed dirt.  Lucky for them, most of the blast’s energy went up and out rather than downward.  Otherwise, copper sarcophagus or not, they would have been flattened.

“No shoes or shirt, but I suppose we can still provide you service,” Alex joked while she and the professor aided Frank back to his feet.

“He…help,” came a weak voice from under the coffin.

“Oh my God, Gallono,” Alex exclaimed crawling back under and came out holding a set of arms.  Professor Russell grabbed one of the limp arms to help Alex pull him clear.  Frank could tell the man was in critical condition from the two gunshot wounds; he was just barely managing to remain conscious.

“The com…communicator,” Gallono whispered.

Frank reached into the front right pocket and pulled out the familiar blue disk.  The sight of it gave Frank pause to consider his options.  If Gallono sent word back to Hastelloy that the regeneration chamber was no more, then their Nexus device would become active again and this dying man would live once more.  Was that a good thing?

He considered this man part of the enemy for over thirty years.  He could wait until Gallono passed before using the communicator.  Along those lines, he could say to Mark, who would be listening in to the conversation, to go ahead and take out Hastelloy.  That would leave them only two aliens with which to contend. 

This was the opportunity of a lifetime to end things, yet looking down at Gallono’s fading eyes he did not see an enemy, or even an alien.  He saw an individual who sacrificed himself for a higher purpose, knowing he might be giving up his immortality.  The man may not be a friend, but he certainly was no enemy this day, and Frank could not justify killing anybody who he did not consider to be an enemy.

Frank made up his mind, placed the disk on Gallono’s bloodied chest, and pressed the man’s thumb to it bringing the device to life.

The now familiar face of Hastelloy appeared in the blue cone of light, but try as he may, Gallono was unable to form any words.

Frank jumped in to fill the silence.  “The Alpha regeneration chamber has been destroyed.  Have your man inside the Nexus chamber turn it back on right away.  Commander Gallono is not going to make it much longer.”

“Acknowledged,” Hastelloy said with surprise in his voice.  “You could have chosen to wait until after he passed to contact us.  Instead, you chose to save the life of my best friend.  That is an unexpected kindness that I shall never forget.  Now, the three of you need to get out of there before the real explosives arrive.  Hastelloy out.”

Alex and the professor hesitated over leaving Gallono lying out in the open waiting for incendiary bombs to start falling.  It took a hard yank on their arms to get them moving toward the pile of rubble where the sealed southern door once stood.  “Gallono will regenerate and be fine, but the three of us don’t have that luxury.  Come on now.  It’s time for me to see if there is anything to the latest barefoot running craze.”