The Mothership (16 page)

Its arms are sticking through it!
Cracker realized, proving the shield was
not impenetrable.

 The tracker’s third arm shot toward
Cracker’s free hand, but he lunged forward, pushing the dynamite at the bubble.
His first contact with the shield was like striking a solid surface. As his
hand lost momentum, the repulsive force designed to stop high velocity impacts
weakened, and his hand slid through the field. Before he realized what had
happened, the dynamite was inside the bubble and he let go, pulling his hand
back. He found the bubble resisted his hand withdrawing as much as it had
pushing in. To his surprise, the weightless dynamite floated in the air between
the tracker and the shield bubble, less than an arm’s length from his face. It
was so close that he saw the small red digital timer count through the last few
seconds to zero.

Oh crap!
He thought as he realized he was going to take the
explosion full in the face.
Never thought I’d blow myself up!

The dynamite exploded close to Cracker’s
face. The bright flash blinded him momentarily as a swirl of flame struck the
inside of the shield bubble, which trapped and channeled the blast back at the
tracker. The alien machine shuddered as the two glowing, rotating spheres
sparkled with energy and winked out, then began skating around the inside the
bubble. The tracker fell to the ground, then the bubble collapsed, freeing a
cloud of gas left from the explosion and letting the two gravity pods shoot off
into the trees like cannon balls.

Cracker fell awkwardly on his head and
shoulders as the tracker toppled over, narrowly missing him as hit the ground.
He rolled onto his side, rubbing his aching leg while Bill scooped up a rifle
from the ground and covered the now lifeless machine.

Wal gave Cracker an appreciative look.
“Good one, mate!”

“You could have been killed,” Bill said
soberly.

“What was I supposed to do? That bloody
thing wrecked the esky,” Cracker said with a crooked grin. “And you know how
much I hate warm beer!”

Slab snorted, half opening his eyes with a
horrified look. “Did someone say warm beer?”

* * * *

The contact team
camped beneath a rough sandstone cliff, inside a pass that cut across Bath
Range from east to west. The rugged trail had been used by aborigines for
thousands of years and was littered with ancient rock paintings and long
extinct campfires. Paperbark trees grew from every foothold in the rocky
escarpment, while the shrill calls of kites and the squeals of their prey
occasionally pierced the night.

Finding sleep elusive, Beckman climbed to a
rock ledge where he could see the valley to the west. Several times he saw
balls of light streak silently above the distant forest at many times the speed
of sound. They were red, orange, blue and brilliant white, reminding him again
of Dr McInness’ explanation of how their color related to the amount of energy
they used.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Laura
asked from the shadows, startling him. She sat with her back against a rock,
hidden in the darkness. Her eyes were fixed on a blue streak to the southeast.

Beckman watched it flash across the sky. “I
don’t know, but they seem to be in a hurry.”

When the object vanished, she lifted her
eyes to the sky. “I wonder where they come from?”

“That star, second from the left,” Beckman
said, then shook his head with a grin. “Just kidding.”

Laura smiled. “Did you know that the
aborigines see the night sky differently to us?”

“Do they?”

“We see constellations in the stars. We
join the dots. They see animals and spirits in the blackness between the
stars.” She raised her hand, and pointed toward a section of sky, “Over there,
that’s a kangaroo. Can you see it, hidden in the darkness?”

Beckman couldn’t see anything resembling a
kangaroo.

She pointed to a different part of the sky.
“That’s a wombat, and right above us is an emu.” She watched his gaze shift to
the different parts of the sky with growing confusion. “I can’t see it either,
but it’s real to them. Maybe they’re right, and we’re wrong.”

“It’s different,” Beckman agreed, realizing
the aboriginal view was as alien to him as if they’d come from another world.

They sat quietly for several minutes
contemplating the patterns in the heavens, then Laura asked, “Do you think my
husband is alive?”

“I really don’t know.”

“What do you think they’re doing to him?”
There was a fragile quaver in her voice. “I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never
believed them.”

He remembered the contact reports he’d
read, the top secret assessments that circulated in rarefied circles, none of
which he could discuss with her. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he felt
her eyes boring into him, anxiously awaiting an answer. “I’m told an advanced
civilization wouldn’t use medieval torture techniques to gather information.”

“Do you believe it?”

Maybe
. “I’m sure he’s in no pain.”

“Will they release him?”

“It depends,” Beckman said cautiously, “On
whether they respect our individual rights. Some civilizations will, others
won’t. The problem is they’re calling the shots, not us.”

“But he’s a human being. They can’t treat
him like …?”

“One of the animals you were studying?”

The comparison chilled her. “We’re not
animals.”

“If they’re a million years ahead of us,
we’re not equals.”

“But we’re civilized.”

“If you were floating up there, looking
down on Earth, what would you think of us? We’ve got wars, poverty, illiteracy,
malnutrition, terrorism and hatreds based on race, religion and politics. We
must look like murderous barbarians to them.”

“That sounds almost philosophical.”

“I’ve been trained to understand their
point of view.” He said, looking up at the night sky thoughtfully. “We just
have to hope they know what they’re doing.”

“What are they doing?”

“I’m not sure about this particular ship,
but the guys who have been watching us a long time are studying us out of
curiosity, and preparing us for contact one day. They’ve had a lot of practice
meeting new civilizations and they know the timetable.”

“What timetable?”

“How long before we figure out how to get
out there.”

“When will we that be?”

“Not in my lifetime. It’s a very long way
off.” He gave her a reassuring look. “They’ve been visiting us for tens of
thousands of years. If they wanted to hurt us, they could have done it long
ago, when we were much less able to defend ourselves. The fact they didn’t
tells us they’re not conquerors.”

“But that may not apply to this ship?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

Laura gazed toward the western horizon. It
occurred to her that the glow of the previous night had gone. She thought it
meant the fires had died down. She didn’t realize it was a result of the great
hull’s ability to shed heat at an incredible rate. “So what does it take, to do
what you do? To hunt these things?”

“We don’t hunt them.”
If there’s any
hunting to be done, they’ll be the hunters, not us.
“We investigate, make
friendly contact if possible.”
Assess threats
. “Some of us have special
forces training, some are technical specialists.”

“Have you ever made friendly contact
before?”

“No, they don’t really want to talk to us.
Hooper and I came close, a few years ago. It didn’t end well, but we have seen
stuff most people never get to see.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Stuff I can’t talk about.” Beckman sighed.
“My father is a retired two star. He used to be proud of me, when I graduated
from the Point, when I made it into Delta. Now he thinks I’m sidelined in a
dead-end desk job. I have to let him keep on thinking that.”

“That must be tough. Can’t you at least let
him know you’re doing important, secret work?”

“That would draw attention to what we’re
doing. If you’re really doing classified work, you don’t tell anyone. You give
them a boring cover story, put them to sleep, kill their curiosity. My father
keeps telling me I won’t make general without combat experience, and field
commands. He’s right, of course. None of this will ever get into my official
record. All it says is I’m responsible for patrolling fences and keeping the
roads clear. A real dead ender.”

“So this job is a career killer?”

“I’ll never make general, but I wouldn’t
want to be doing anything else,” he said without a trace of disappointment. He
glanced at his watch. “You might want to get some sleep. We’ve got a long march
tomorrow.”

“I am tired,” Laura said, standing up.
“Goodnight, Major.” She started to climb down the rocks, then hesitated. “I am
grateful you came along. This is no place to be alone,” she said, then
clambered down.

He watched her until she was safely back in
camp, then turned back toward the west. Far across the valley a brilliant white
light raced above the trees like a shooting star. It vanished to the north of
the escarpment in seconds, leaving Beckman filled with foreboding.

What are they doing out there?

* * * *

Dan McKay drifted
in and out of consciousness in a strange dream state, with no sense of his body
or location. Occasionally his mind cleared enough to sense a relentless
throbbing deep in his head and an unseen pressure pinning him in place.

In those moments of
clarity he remembered Blue had been barking, frightened, the night he’d been
captured at Laura’s zoological station. He’d gone to investigate, discovered something
dark and massive in the sky, then a brilliant beam of light had shone down on
him and the dog. He’d fired his gun, then the weapon had been torn from his
hands, flying up into the light. He noticed Blue was floating in the air beside
him, and then that his own feet were no longer touching the ground. The last
thing he recalled was looking up at the dazzling light as he glided toward it.

Now, in the black void of his retreating
coma, he tried to rouse himself, but couldn’t. His fear spiked, triggering an
adrenalin surge. He became aware of his body, even though his muscles would not
respond. Dan forced his eyelids open enough to form slits to see through. A
cone of brilliant blue white light flooded down from above and, though nearly
blinded, he looked around. In the darkness outside the light, spherical shapes
with long, slender metallic arms moved around him, unaware of his fight for
consciousness. A white substance covered him and an invisible surgical field
held every molecule in his body steady while silver metal threads penetrated
his skin in a dozen places. They probed every organ, followed every path,
collecting microcellular samples to perfectly map his biology.

He looked up, discovering a silver thread
piercing his forehead. It reached to the very center of his brain, recording
and decoding every pathway. Terror overcame him as he realized it was the cause
of his terrible pain. He tried to scream, but could do no more than let out an
anguished moan.

One of the spherical shapes in the darkness
drifted toward him, unsure why the specimen was conscious. It took only a
moment to discover the primitive creature’s body was flooded with a hormone
that had increased its heart rate and contracted its blood vessels. Before the
specimen could injure itself, its neurological system was disconnected from its
brain and bioelectric impulses neutralized the effects of the hormone.

In a heartbeat, Dan fell back into the dark
depths of an induced coma.

An hour before
dawn, the contact team broke camp, crossed Bath Range and headed northwest through
virgin forest. They marched all morning, crossing narrow streams and skirting
water lily covered billabongs surrounded by bamboo-like pandanus palms. When
the sun neared its zenith, Cougar radioed a warning.

“There’s an object
hovering to the southwest.”

Beckman, Markus and Dr McInness crept
through leafy undergrowth to the sniper’s position to see for themselves. Floating
above the tree tops three kilometers away was a rectangular snub nosed vehicle
with a slit cockpit window, four times as long as it was high. Pulsing lights
ran along its windowless sides as a series of slender metallic poles floated
down into the trees from its flat bottom.

They watched five poles descend, then
Cougar said, “They’re building something.”

“It’s on our line of advance,” Beckman
said. “Could be a sensor system.”

“Or a weapon,” Markus added.

Dr McInness looked annoyed. “They hardly
need to build gun emplacements out here.”

Beckman watched the craft float up, away
from the forest and turn toward the southwest. It dipped its nose, then the
lights along its length glowed brightly as it streaked away under hyper
acceleration and vanished from sight.