Storm Over Saturn (24 page)

McLyx finally arrived and took command of the message flows. All he heard was static at first. Static, and a strange pulsating type of music. But then, slowly, gradually, the messages started coming through. They were orders for them to turn back.

But McLyx knew right away something was wrong with this. First of all, there was no one who had the authority to call them back. But even more frightening, the voice on the other end ordering him to return to base was that of a child.

McLyx was convinced at that point he, too, had gone round the bend. The voices in his ear—and there were suddenly more than one—were saying the right words, even using standard SSG codes, but they were children, first ordering him, then pleading, then
begging
him to turn around and return to Saturn.

McLyx ripped off his comm helmet and hurled it across the room. He looked at the two communications officers. Now they were almost in tears.

He said to them, "This is not a mission we can turn back from. We have to keep going. We have see it through. There's no other choice."

An instant later, they popped back into the void of the Lost Dimension. A chorus of moans came up from those on the flight deck. More vomiting could be heard. The lights within dimmed even further. Outside the windows there were no stars, no planets, nothing. Just blackness.

That's when the scanning officers called out. Something else was going wrong.

McLyx slid his way over to Scan Control. This station had a large screen with a multitude of dials, half of which had been skewed by all the interdimensional jumping. But the screen itself was working, and the image it was beginning to show was both troubling and fantastic.

"Someone is following us," one of the scanning officers told McLyx.

McLyx studied the big screen. One moment it was empty. The next, five objects had suddenly popped onto it. They were moving as fast as the saucer. In fact, they were coming up alongside it.

This was impossible, though. Wasn't it?

McLyx was simply stunned. Other officers were now looking at the long-range scan screen as well. Panic started to seep in. McLyx knew it was crazy, but he had to keep order on his bridge, to keep events from going out of control.

"It's just a blink!" he yelled to the flight crew. "Get back to your stations. These things will go away!"

But they didn't go away.

Just a few seconds later, the five strange craft had pulled even with the saucer. They could be seen very clearly out the starboard side windows. The craft were bulky, gray green, big enough to carry a few people, with a huge metal spinning thing on their noses. The words "U.S. Navy" were emblazoned on their fuselages, along with a big white and a striped red and blue emblem. People in goggles were looking back at them.

"They are not real!" McLyx screamed again. "It's the blinks! Don't look at them!"

But suddenly the comm set in the control deck came to life again. And this time, everyone could hear it. "This is Right 19," an eerie voice said. "We are lost. Can you give us a compass check?"

Still shaken by the previous haunting message, the comm officers lording over the communications gear were too stunned to reply. And what would they say if they could?

"This is Flight 19… we are not sure of our position… can you help us?"

McLyx just stared at the comm officers, and the men stared back, unable to move.

"I'm sure I'm over the Keys," the voice said. "I just don't know how far down…"

With that, the five airplanes banked left and were suddenly gone.

No sooner had they disappeared when another object was detected coming up on the other side of the saucer.

It was another kind of spacecraft, but just as strange as the five objects that had just ridden alongside them.

This vessel was big and white with a black bottom and a high tail. On the nose was the word
Columbia
, but all other writing on the side of the vessel looked to be burned away. This craft had a slightly delta shape, not quite a wedge, but possibly, to some eyes, the beginnings of that omnipresent Empire design could be seen here. Three huge engine noz-zles were sticking out of its aft section, but no flames or exhaust could be seen coming out of them. The craft was keeping pace with the saucer, but it did not seem to be moving under its own power.

McLyx was staring at this ghost machine now, unable to take his eyes off of it, mesmerized by its sudden fantastic presence. What was it? What was it doing here, in the Lost Dimension with them? How could it be moving so fast without the power to do so?

He ordered it scanned front to back, top to bottom. The scans came back almost instantly. There were no life-forms aboard the vessel. Yet, no sooner had he heard this report when he saw a person at the craft's small window looking over at him. This person waved to him; McLyx had to stop himself from waving back. Then, suddenly, flames started pouring out of the vessel's left wing. They quickly spread up and over its body and soon engulfed the tail. Just seconds later, the entire craft was close to being totally involved in flames.

Yet throughout all this, the man in the cabin continued waving to him.

"It's just another blink!" McLyx roared again. "Stop looking at it! That's an order!"

No sooner were these words out of his mouth when the flames engulfed the craft completely. But it did not explode nor did it melt away. It just simply banked smoothly to the right and soon disappeared into the void. A moment later, the saucer dumped back into real time.

McLyx closed his eyes and tried his best to keep his emotions under control. It was hard to do. He had a distinct feeling that he was slipping… just slipping away to a place that was not good, that had no light, that actually might be very, very hot, yet dark at the same time. He tried to shake away these thoughts, tried to shake away everything but what he had to concentrate on regarding the mission at hand.

When he opened his eyes again, he realized everyone on the bridge was looking at him.

He was about to scream at them to get back to their stations, when the scan officer called out another alarm.

Something else was chasing them now. An Empire vessel. But going very, very fast.

McLyx ordered its image up on the screen. Again, he was astounded by what he saw.

It was indeed an Empire ship. Just a bit smaller than an Empire spaceflghter, it was wedge-shaped. But it had a very high tail, a sort of blunted nose, and open-ended nacelles on either side of the cockpit. It looked very, very old.

"It's another blink!" McLyx roared again.

But this time, he really wasn't so sure.

It was the
KosmoVox
, of course, hot on the trail of the flying saucer, intent on stopping it before it was able to launch its XWMD weapon at Doomsday 212.

Hunter was still at the controls of the ancient spacecraft, had the throttle buried, and was moving faster than he thought possible in an Empire ship.

Following the saucer had been easy—almost too easy. It was leaving a contrail thousands of miles long and nearly as wide and had flown a straight line from Saturn to the Two Arm. True, it was blinking in and out, appearing then disappearing at infrequent intervals. But it was doing this so rapidly, it actually made it even easier for Hunter to keep up with it.

It was a chase then. A fantastic, exciting, exhilarating chase. And Hunter was nearly delirious from the pursuit.

Absolutely nothing had gone wrong since the
Kosmo's
dramatic departure from Saturn. Just how the SSG-controlled saucer got beyond the Pluto Cloud, they didn't know. But he simply blew past every SG frontier post he came to, following the saucer's phosphorescent contrail in the sky. There were some SG pursuits, especially once they'd busted out beyond the Solar System and headed in the direction of the Star Trench. Hundreds of regular SG ships were moving back and forth through this corridor. Some were spacefighters, others Starcrashers, still others just hump ships with weapons on them. It didn't make any difference. Anyone who tried to chase the
KosmoVox
simply got lost in their cosmic dust.

And strangely, Hunter knew—he just
knew
—what was happening aboard the saucer. He knew about the stink and the slime and the strange calls from ghostly children. He knew about the spray bomb and the popping back and forth between dimensions. He even knew it was the infamous Finn-Cool McLyx at the helm.

He knew these things as clearly as if he was riding aboard the saucer himself.

But he had no idea
how
he knew these things.

And that was starting to bother him.

Annie was at his side during the entire adventure, of course, kneeling next to him, looking gorgeous, her arm hugging his leg. Zoloff was hanging over his shoulder the whole way, too. They had rooted him on continuously during the chase, praising his flying skills and being very vocal in how heroic he was, taking on the SSG practically single-handedly.

For many reasons, though, it shouldn't have been this easy. The
KosmoVox
was so old it didn't have any of the ul-trasophisticated long-range scanning equipment that more contemporary Empire ships employed. Nor did it have anything more than a simple navigation suite. But they always knew where they were going and what was around them simply because Zoloff had this fantastic ability to just look out one of the tiny ship's small windows and tell them exactly where they were at any given moment.

And at mis moment they were just minutes from Doomsday 212, and they had apparently caught up with the saucer just in time. The SSG ship was flying very irregularly, almost convulsing its way through space. Hunter had the
KosmoVox
flying at nearly full speed, its velocity indicator had long ago disappeared into the red. And even though it seemed like the saucer would have the ability to go much, much faster, Hunter had had no problems at all keeping up with it.

And that bothered him, too.

"Now that we have it in sight, we have to do something!" Hunter yelled up to Zoloff now. Their prop core was sizzling badly, and it was not quiet inside the old ship. It almost seemed like they had left a door open or something, and the wind was roaring in—impossible, of course.

Zoloff yelled back, "What are your suggestions?"

Hunter was stumped. He scanned the control panel but did not find what he was looking for.

"Does this rig have any weapons?" he yelled. He couldn't believe he hadn't checked for such a thing before.

There was just a moment's pause, then Zoloff yelled back, "No! There was never any need!"

"Why not?" Annie wanted to know, asking a rare question.

"We built it to move our spies around " Zoloff replied. "We always flew too quick to shoot at anything or to have anything shoot at us."

Just great
, Hunter thought.
Now what
?

"How can we stop it then?" he yelled back to Zoloff. The saucer was getting bigger in their field of vision.

"We'll have to ram it," was Zoloff's surprising answer.

Hunter looked back at him. "
Ram it
?"

Zoloff got that crazy smile again. "It's an old Russian tactic," he said. "Keep hitting it until it goes down!"

Hunter hesitated, but only for a moment. As desperate as Zoloff's suggestion sounded, they really didn't have any other choice. They had to stop the saucer. A planet full of his friends was in grave danger, and the fate of a large section of space was at stake.

If only I had the Flying Machine
, he thought again. His six X blasters would have vaporized the saucer in seconds, as it was unarmed, too, at least with defensive weapons. But he was stuck out here, with his prey before him, and no way to take it down.

Unless he rammed it.

"Brave Russian pilots," Zoloff was telling him. "During the Great Patriotic War. They would get up behind German bombers and use their propellers to saw off their tails. A Heinkel cannot fly without a tail. And that monster in front of us cannot fly with half its body missing."

Hunter couldn't argue that. Plus time was running out. They were just minutes from reaching Doomsday 212 now.

So he would have to ram the SSG ship in order to destroy it, its bomb, and everyone on board.

But he knew by doing so, it would be the end of them, too.

Zoloff patted him once on the shoulder. Annie hugged his leg.

'Tear not, my friend," the Ancient Cosmonaut said. "We are what we are, and we do what we can do."

Hunter tapped his left breast pocket twice, then pushed the throttle just a little bit farther into the control panel.

The
KosmoVox
shot ahead, slamming into the rear end of the saucer a moment later. The collision was fantastic and violent. Sparks everywhere, fire coming right up to Hunter's eyes, metal crashed and bent. A thunderous booming noise that shouldn't have been.

So this is how it ends
, he thought.

"What better way?" another voice asked.

He looked down and saw Annie smiling up at him.
At least she will be with me
, he thought.

The saucer increased its speed slightly and managed to pull away from the
KosmoVox
. Hunter stayed right behind it, though. He could see the puncture wound he'd caused in its skin. Air and other unidentifiable gases were spewing out of it. He saw a flicker of flame, too.

"Again!" Zoloff cried.

But Hunter was already jamming the throttle forward. They hit the saucer a second time. Again there was a huge explosion of sparks. Again a surprising, thundering
boom
! Again, flames that seemed so close to him, they went right around him without burning his face at all.

Again, the saucer managed to pull itself ahead.

Hunter didn't wait for any encouragement this time. He zoomed up, over, and then straight down, this time hitting the saucer square on its circular flight deck. This was the hardest impact of all; this time he knew he'd caused a mortal wound. He'd penetrated the saucer so deeply, he could see the startled, frightened faces of the SSG deck crew. He was almost eyeball to eyeball with McLyx and his comm officers. McLyx saw him, and in a sort of audio slow motion, screamed at him, "You?"