Thank you for reading, you guys. :)
7
Meanwhile, somewhere entirely else-
There in the empty transport lab, he'd set the spacetime parameters for Earth, seven hundred years in the future. Then, he'd run like heck for that big, glowing disk. Bumped something on the way and thought: 'That's gonna leave a mark.'
Leapt up on top of the knee-high neutronium circle, as its seams began flaring with lightning-like power. Stumbled a little but made it to the center just before a hooting alarm tore the air. Then came this weird shaft of blue flame and…
…a deep, ringing bell tone sounded, so loud that he felt it right down to the roots of his teeth. A round metal door whooshed open, letting Caleb stagger out of what felt like a humming, old-fashioned telephone booth. Was expecting Earth, 700 FN (From Now, get it? Caleb made that up on his own.) What he got was a sense of huge distance crossed in space and time, both. You didn't move that far, that fast, and not feel every inch of it.
Everything came as a sudden, cold-water shock to the young traveler; plus-size gravity; thin, chilly air with a weird, sour-metallic bite; dim, reddish light, like a bad-tempered sunset on steroids. His shadow was mixed with the transport booth's, arrowing long and skinny ahead of him, seeming to point at a row of silvery, box-like buildings. (No windows or doors, but what else could they be, right? No signs, either, except for a spinning pale light on a tall metal pole, maybe ten yards away.)
That tone was still blaring. Caleb took a deep, gulping breath, wondering what he'd gotten himself into, and how much trouble he was going to be facing, back home. Took a few steps away from the booth, which stood alone in some kind of circular, force-shielded plaza.
Looking around, he saw that the ground was paved, with squares of reddish-dark soil left free, harbouring a few thin, ropey … plants? They turned to 'face' him; the shiny undersides of their leaves flashing up like schools of nervously darting fish. These, too, cast yards-long shadows, crossing here and there patches of strawberry snow.
Caleb wandered further away from that padded transport booth, and then turned around. What he saw was… wow. There was a sun in the sky like an angry red blister; big as a basketball, held at arm's length.
For real, he could see its surface boil and seethe, without hardly squinting. Saw currents, bubbles and slow-moving plasma loops. Scariest frickin' thing he'd ever encountered, no lie. The rest of the sky was a muttering, bruise-coloured purplish-red. High overhead, there were five… make that six… big, full disks in different shades and sizes, like someone had launched a giant bouquet of party balloons. They moved fast, too, crossing the sky as Caleb looked on, slack-jawed and stupefied.
Then he heard yelling.
"Sir and Meester! Sir and Meester! Please! You must be to coming within!"
The dark-haired substitute aquanaut yanked his gaze away from that dim red sun with real difficulty. Like, there was a just-about-audible ripping noise. Saw three people coming at him in light environment suits, pouring from one of those silvery, box-like shelters.
They were crazy-tall and real skinny, and that made Caleb grin like a fool, 'cause maybe he'd actually done it. Maybe Kaise was here somewhere, waiting. Only one way to find out, he supposed.
"Hey guys!" he called back, waving one arm. "It's me, Kabe Zalz! Anyone seen Kaise Bek-Dotter?"
His breath misted in the dry, cold air, and his skin prickled like he'd been out on the lifeguarding stand for twelve solid hours. (Not fun; by that point, you wished they'd all sink straight to the bottom, just for a chance to plunge in, or crawl back to the shade.)
The three officers… their environment suits all had rank-stripes and smooth, barely readable badges…surrounded Caleb, hauling him into their bunched up, red-velvet shadow.
"Sir and Meester, we are receiving no warning of transport!" cried one of them, gazing at their visitor with big blue eyes and a worried expression. "You are having no protection, here! We must to hurry inside, at once! There is being a flare-storm!"
They'd been moving the entire time. Somebody triggered a hidden door, by pressing a belt-stud. Then, like a very fast rugby scrum, they rushed him inside of the nearest building; twittering shock and concern.
There, well… Caleb wasn't sure what he'd expected, but industrial-grey, half underground dwellings weren't it. See, those shelters were only the surface. Inside and below lay a whole grid-work of streets and square, windowless buildings. A few quiet electrical cars hummed past them on hurry-up business, but not very many. The light here was pale and fluorescent, rather than red.
There were people around, too, but Caleb could not see their faces, and they sure weren't noticing him. Everyone but the security team was wearing some kind of wraparound headset, like gamer-gear. He'd have looked closer, but his rescue squad hustled Caleb further into the city, which seemed gloomy, dismal and eerily quiet.
"Hey, guys… where are we?" he asked them, drawing a trio of startled looks. "I mean, sorry to use your transport-booth without asking. If there's a fare or something, I'll figure out how to pay it… but I don't think we're where I wanted to go. This, uh… this isn't Earth, is it?"
Caleb could tell, because their long limbs pulled heavy-world hard, and because of that swollen red sun. See, Mr. Brain had improved Dr. Reeves' transport design, adding a fail-safe to stop people from ending up somewhere deadly, like New York, or deep space. Instead, they'd get bounced to the nearest free stepping disk. He knew all about those, having been out to Kaise's once-ago timeline.
"No, Sir and Meester," said the officers' spokesman. "We are to thinking you come here from Airth. This is to being the Proxima B East Pole detention centre. You are not being here to inspect, Sir and Meester? It is being a very long wait since last contact."
'Aw, crap!' thought Caleb, wondering whether to hit his shiny-bright wrist comm. 'What's gone wrong, this time?'
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
On the tarmac, taxiing over a small, east-facing airstrip-
They took off on time, after their baggage was loaded aboard, and they'd gotten clearance from Pacific West Tower. The mail plane was a Foster light shuttle, based in Hawaii, but roaming wherever its pilot was minded to go. Built to save fuel, the plane was able to just reach suborbital heights, if pushed.
From Honolulu to Tracy Island, forty-five minutes; packed in there with food supplies, med-gear, biodroid pellets and everyone's online purchases. There was a free seat up by the pilot, which the two young officers avoided. Emma, because she'd rather hang out with O'Bannon; Ridley, because she hated watching someone else fly. They never did the job right, except maybe Tracy.
Instead, Ridley and Emma sat in back with the cargo, catching up and making wild plans for vacation.
"We'll take them someplace completely out of comm-reach, and then…"
"Where's that?" Cut in Emma, interrupting her auburn-haired friend. "The top of Mt. Everest? Down in that ancient bomb-shelter city? The Asteroid Palace? Ree… everywhere 's in touch, nowadays. Even the bottom of the sea has GDF comm posts."
Ridley sighed, glancing idly out of the cabin window at nothing but ocean and sky.
"Back in the day," she mused, over droning engines and thumping turbulence. "People could actually get away from it all. You could be alone and just think, if you wanted to. Could… y'know… read a book or take a walk in the woods, and know you were the only person for hundreds of miles, in any direction, at all. Like flying, without all the comm-chatter."
Kraft shook her head, smiling a little.
"Careful, Ree," she joked. "The Unity crew 'll come get you, if they hear stuff like that. Silent reading and solo hikes are too 'individual'. If you can't do it together, on the net…"
"…Then it's probably harmful to public well-being. I know," Ridley concluded miserably. "But, Em… For thousands of years, people had lives that weren't always out there on public display! They went off by themselves and thought what they wanted to!"
Emma reached over to place a warm hand on the unhappy space captain's arm.
"I know, and I'm not saying that's wrong. Just that it could get you rounded up for questioning and maybe demoted, if the wrong people hear you talking like that." Then, just speculating, Emma said, "Maybe the Luddite Preserve? They rough it out there, 'cause they have to. Some people head out that way on vacation, to get back in touch with the simple life. Taz likes to camp, I think. Have to ask him ab… whoops. Hang on, he's texting me."
Ridley O'Bannon watched Emma dig for her phone, then returned to looking outside. Was it so awful, wanting a little privacy? A chance to be all alone with your thoughts?
Sometimes, visiting Tracy out on his station, she could drift down to the ring while he was at work. Then, having chased off that wretched chat-bot of his, she could just lie there, looking at Earth from above. Thinking, well… not much of anything.
Global-1 was so crowded; noisy and bustling, with bits of it constantly shorting out or falling apart. Not the plum post she'd always longed for; not Mars or the Asteroid Belt… But, then again, she'd never have met John Tracy, if it hadn't been for that rattletrap station, and Eden.
"Okay… what the unholy F!" Emma demanded, yanking Ridley right back out of her reverie. "He just asked if I like older men!"
Ridley snorted with poorly suppressed laughter.
"Maybe he wants to set you up with the Colonel, or that crazy uncle of theirs, the one who gets everyone's name wrong," she suggested, grinning. Then, "What does he call you?"
"Evelyn," Kraft grunted, reaching up and around to refasten a hank of escaping, brownish-blonde hair.
"I'm Regina," confessed O'Bannon, whose braid was always perfect. Came of spending so much time in a helmet and snoopy cap. "But he's gotta be making that sh*t up. No one could be that confused, and still fly for International Rescue."
Only, her friend had stopped listening.
"Not setting me up with anybody, if he knows what's good for him," Emma scowled, shaking her innocent phone as if it were Virgil. "But he won't tell me what's going on, either. Just says there've been a few changes, and I'll find out when I get there. Dammit! I hate mysteries! What about yours, Ree?" Emma looked suddenly up at O'Bannon, her green eyes gone narrow and fierce. "Can you get an update from Spy-guy? Maybe he knows what the h*ll Taz is talking about!"
Ridley considered. Last time she'd heard from Tracy, he'd been at a Japanese hospital, escorting 'her' to visit a friend. He'd let O'Bannon know that there'd been few issues, but everything was fine. He hadn't got badly hurt. Though, knowing Tracy…
O'Bannon shook her head.
"He's in Japan, Em. If it's a recent development, he's probably further out of the loop than we are."
Wanted to ask about 'S', their almost brother-in-law, but not with the mail pilot right there and possibly listening. She'd said too much, already. Decided to message Tracy, though, just in case.
'Afternoon, Cpt.' She sent, on their private comm line. He'd been promoted after preventing some kind of massive meteor-strike, along with his brothers and crazy-ass uncle. 'You still up for a visit?'
Got back, very quickly,
'Yes. Busy. Love. C soon.'
Ridley felt a sudden warm rush in the pit of her stomach and heart. Love. He'd said it, again. Did he mean it? Was that business with Lady Penelope really an act? On the Island, Penny was all over Scott, but she looked just the same way on camera, with Tracy.
Whatever… Ridley was too proud to ask or admit that it bothered her. Only Emma knew how she felt, and had offered to carve steaks and chops from her possibly wandering astronaut. An old-fashioned suggestion.
In the true spirit of Unity, no one was supposed to be completely exclusive with a partner. For mental and societal health, you were expected to, erm… put it about, some. Only, Ree didn't want to.
Well, she decided, as their plane flew into a darkening, bumpier sky, she'd just be straight with him. Tapped out,
'Big talk, Cpt. Get back here & prove it.'
Emma Kraft had been watching her friend's swift-flitting expressions. Now, she said,
"I know a bunch of Marines who could probably break him in half… If, y'know, he was drunk, and they ganged up ten to one."
"Twenty," Ridley corrected, starting to grin, and putting her phone away. "It would take at least twenty Marine-Recon beasts to take Tracy down."
Kraft shook her head in mock sympathy.
"That few? He's been sick, lately? I wouldn't pit less that fifty, on Taz."
Then, feeling completely ridiculous, both women burst into laughter; romantic troubles and "older men" forgotten. There was nothing you couldn't face, with a solid best friend at your side. Even life with the Tracys.