From Beyond the Blue Planet Read online

  “There,” he said, pointing a finger. The big, dark creature before him narrowed its heavy-lidded eyes and focused where Seth was pointing.

  “Arrrh!” it crowed, rocking back. Its next sentence was totally unintelligible … probably technical stuff, thought Seth. But what now? The creature seemed to know some words but clearly not enough for them to communicate properly. It had been nothing less than miraculous that Seth had got as far as he had. He watched the giant creature carefully as he waited for its next reaction. Many fleeting emotions or thoughts flickered across its dark features, then it obviously made some decision.

  It seemed to be groping behind its back then, staggeringly, a fourth arm appeared. It seemed to be offering Seth another small, flat box. Then it spoke but every single word appeared to take an enormous effort …

  “You-oo … for you … you … take.” It proffered the box and Seth gingerly reached out and took it. As far as he could tell, the giant seemed content and not about to cause any trouble. “If …” it struggled for the right word … “trouble come. Large trouble. You dick.” He pressed the button on his controller.

  He means ‘press’ reasoned Seth. Dick means press. But what happens then? Is this thing also a gun, perhaps a ray-gun of some type? Or is it a communicator? Or, simply a controller? He was about to try to talk with the giant once more … he needed more answers … but the giant was touching a device on one of its arms. And then Seth felt really weird. He had been drunk occasionally. He had tried some drugs. But …. He felt himself falling slowly to the ground and his last thoughts were all about cushioning the fall and not banging his head against a rock.

  ………. Seth focused his mind back on the present and what Wal was saying …

  “A spaceship! My mind can’t quite handle that one. Alright, we have sent out explorers into space but, mmmh … not really the same thing. I go along with the cold and Eye-am sorta malfunctioning. Misreading what it saw. Could possibly be a device coming in like those we sent out but, a spaceship! I’ll pass on that one, Seth.”

  Seth frowned. He looked around the group. “Do the rest of you guys go along with Wal on this … misinterpretation of data by Eye-am maybe due to the extreme cold conditions on Proteus?”

  There was a collective muttering which seemed affirmative and the young voice which had piped up before – Seth recognised it now as belonging to a newcomer, Al Bennett – repeated its first assessment … “Yep. Must be the cold.”

  “And what about that pic of an outline? Blurry but maybe we can sharpen that up. Not the shape of spaceship?” Seth pursued. Shrugs from the others.

  It had taken longer than the half-hour so Seth set out to annoy his chairman by sending Al Bennett as a messenger.

  “Tell the general we’ll reconvene at two-thirty,” he said. “Wal, come in my office for a sec.”

  The big pencil-chewer trundled after Seth. They were quite close in their opinions and valued the other’s viewpoint. They made themselves comfortable and Seth led off …

  “Yeah, you guessed it … I’m not so sure. Anyway, what do we do with this info? The general won’t like it and he’ll try to laugh it out of court. Do we tell him? Try advising him, ha-ha? What do you figure now, Wal?”

  Wal was quicker than expected this time. “Tell him? Sure. Let him make a decision, that’s what he gets the big bucks for. But we both know he was going to close us down anyway. Now it’ll be a bit more tricky for him … with such a weird message … not to mention Eye-am going quiet on us … though he’ll have all the ammo he needs. But then … he’ll be thinking, what if some hostile from another planet does turn up to attack Earth and we have no defence. The general will figure that it’s all been recorded. His decision not to defend lil-ole Earth against marauding aliens. Yeah, I know it sounds funny, but our friend is caught between the two proverbials. Since we were going to be closed down anyway … the edge-ofspace warning set-up that is … what do we care which way he jumps?”

  That was a hell’uva speech for Wal, thought Seth, thinking over what his friend had said. He decided it was just about right – except that Wal didn’t know about his meeting with the weirdo stranger, the swarthy giant, all those years ago. And to Seth even that would have been a dream except for one thing – the small, flat gadget he had been given and had stashed away at home. Somehow he had resisted the temptation to take it to bits; after all he was now in charge of some very sophisticated lab machines and they could certainly have told him everything about it. But, to him through all this time, it was somehow an alien thing and not to be messed with. He had thought about the weird meeting in the backwoods many times. He was sure he had met an alien even though his mind fought against accepting this. The stranger’s clothing; his skin … and, of course, the four arms. Or had he banged his head and dreamt it all? Unless – he searched for the giant’s words at the back of his mind – ‘large trouble’ came along. Then he had to ‘dick’! He had remembered this strange word and he had smiled to himself.

  “Okay, Wal. You and the guys see if you can read any more into the signal … and try to clarify the shape of the so-called spaceship. I’ll go back to the meeting and drop our little bombshell in the general’s lap.

  Chapter 3

  The Last Farewell Keelon decided not to just sit there awaiting his fate; he would initiate the action he had previously worked out.

  “Kee, old friend! Time for you to make a journey. Time for you to find a new home.”

  “Where do we go, Master-friend?”

  “Not we, friend. I don’t know where my journey will

  lead. Perhaps to a new universe, but this is a trip you will make alone. I have programmed much new information into your memory and given you some new capabilities. But … you will soon be on your own … for a while at least. What will become of you and what you do, I haven’t any idea. Come with me.”

  The ReeRee unit dutifully followed Keelon to part of the outer bulkhead, a piece where there was obviously a type of door which blended well with the rest of the satin-grey structure.

  “The safety pod is docked here,” said Keelotron with as near to a puzzled tone as a robot can get. “I conclude that I must travel in this.”

  “Coor-rect, old friend.” A panel slid silently upwards. “Climb aboard, Kee …. Oh, and good fortune attend you.”

  The bulbous robot made its entrance to the pod look effortless. There were no more words, signals or good-byes. The panel closed.

  Keelon ignored the control pad on one of his arms and strolled over to a large, complex unit nearby. He pressed a button with an uncharacteristic tightening of his swarthy jaw muscle and watched a screen with emotions only just under control. He saw the pod speed away towards a distant star which he knew was this system’s sun. The he turned to the new presence which he had sensed behind him.

  A harsh voice growled at him, “Keelon! At last the elusive criminal is caught. Look at this, Tzern … he has just fired off something in the ship’s pod. All that valuable creeto-material he stole, do you think?”

  Keelon weighed up his two captors. Both were well above his height but with similar dark, though rather scaly, skins encased in a silvery chain-metal battle suit. The first one to have spoken had five bright orange chevrons on the chest which denoted the rank of Chase Commander. The other main difference from Keelon was their thick, black beards. Both pointed slim cylinders at him which they each held easily between their fingers.

  The Chase Commander’s companion shook his beard. “No, Commander. Note the absence of the ReeRee unit from its birth … and my sensor does not detect it elsewhere on this vessel. For whatever reason, he has just ejected it.”

  Keelon remained silent, a slight, enigmatic smile playing about his thick lips.

  The leader twitched the small cylinder he held pointed at Keelon. “Sent it off to take and guard your treasure, scum? Since you will not live, to what purpose? Where have you sent it?”

  “Trust you to get it all wrong, Alcro: you and
your dumb lieutenant, Tzern. There is no treasure. Never was. And I have sent my ReeRee unit somewhere where you two megs will never find it. I didn’t want you taking it back to the Zemblastion empire to play silly games with.”

  Alcro put his head back and roared with a heavy, grating laugh. “Now isn’t that typical … the only friend our simple-minded criminal, Keelon, has is a metal … well mostly metal … personal android. And such a poor example too. Early model, ridiculously small, no weaponry … if you had installed that, I’m sure you would have kept it here to try to defend you.” His coarse laugh ripped out again. “Haaarh, what a battle that would have been for us. Like fighting a food-bin. Anyway, you will tell us now exactly where you have sent this foodbin, otherwise … well, you know what drugs we can inject into you. No choice but to tell all, then … except maybe to lessen the pain a little.”

  Keelon smiled a sad little smile. It sat strangely on his heavy, dark features but the two chasers who had materialised in his ship wondered at it. Tzern said, “What?”

  “Do you ever drink Kussic?” Keelon asked.

  “Kussic? What’s all this about? We haven’t come all this way to drink your …”

  Keelon held up all four hands. “It is made from the juice of the Kuss-Kuss tree. Quite pleasant. However it does not take kindly to certain additives … they turn it a deep blue although it still retains its pleasant taste.”

  Alcro said in a low, hard tone to his lieutenant, “I think we’ve had enough of this lesson about the biology of the Zemblastion system, Tzern. Have you got the hypodermic ready?”

  Keelon seemed to ignore the threat. “Now … those additives I was telling you about are varied and some are quite complex. One that interested me was the one that … with the Kuss-Kuss juice … gives a sudden and rather decisive reaction to a drop in temperature … Hey, has someone turned the heating down?”

  Sometimes Alcro could be quite quick. “Tzern! Move fast. Get the heating up as fast as you can.”

  The lieutenant wasted valuable seconds (Earth time) coming to a realisation and almost starting to question his leader. Then he spun round and his eyes searched for the ship’s systems control. His slower mind then homed in on a fact common to all sophisticated space vessels …

  “Voice control! Raise heat levels,” he commanded.

  Keelon was already pitching over but he retained the slight smile which twisted his thick lips. Somehow he managed to whisper a final triumphant remark …

  “Tone recognition …” Then he was dead.

  “Gleds!” cried out the enraged Chase Commander. “Shall I inaugurate a trace? We should be able to find which planet the ReeRee unit headed for.”

  Alcro spread his arms in futile despair. “No point. We have our gern. He’s caught and terminated. I’ll do a report to make it look like we carried out the execution. His food-bin will be of no use to anyone or anything, wherever it has landed. It probably crashed anyway. Let’s go.”

  They set the controls of Keelon’s spaceship to plunge into the cold wastes of a large, blue, nearby planet then signalled for their return to the Chase Ship.

  Chapter 4

  No way out General Ceri-Baker had returned to his seat at the head of the long, highly polished conference table. He picked idly at a cuff of his dress uniform and listened without paying much attention to his aide’s quiet voice outlining where the meeting was likely to go when Seth Hellman arrived back from lunch.

  “… of course, he’ll kick up a stink … losing his beloved edge-of-space detection system. And this spaceship thing … I mean! What’s all that about? Does he expect us to believe it? But, what I can’t see …”

  The door squeaked open and Seth was present once more. Close on his heels was a plump, curly-haired, female scientist whose job was to take notes at the meeting. ‘Typical’, thought the general who used a voice recorder. ‘Probably his bit on the side’.

  “Okay, general. Sorry for the enforced break … I trust your lunch was an improvement on my bacon roll. Do you wish to pick up on the final item on the agenda?”

  The hard muscles along the general’s jaw tightened. “I expected you to present us with some sort of, er, explanation as to why you asked for the break. Am I remembering correctly … wasn’t a spaceship mentioned?” The tight muscles around his mouth relaxed into a sort of humorous grimace. He came close to a chuckle. “Have they not landed yet … the aliens that is?”

  His aide spluttered. Seth tried to make has face expressionless. “We got a reading from Eye-am … not the periodic report, a special. The photo it sent was blurred but its built-in computer analysed the signals it was receiving as coming from an object … a vessel … with signs of intelligence.”

  The Aide took the unusual step of butting in before his boss could speak. “You’d programmed it to decipher the language of an alien then? What did it think they said?” It was all he could to bottle up his mirth again.

  “Are there any useless aides down on your planet Earth ‘cos we’d like to borrow one to clean out our john, we think it said,” shot back Seth, icily.

  “ Hellman!” the general barked. “Let’s keep this meeting on track.

  “I’m with you on that one, general. So … take it from there.”

  The general gathered himself, slowly and carefully it seemed to Seth. “This has nothing to do with this spaceship report, you understand. I may be your commanding officer even though you are non-military, but I have my bosses too. What they are saying to me is that the federal government cannot afford the chancy project of which Eye-am is a part …”

  Seth broke in, “Further to that, general; Eye-am seems to have become defunct. We don’t know why yet.”

  “Whether your sentinel on the edge of space is functional or not is irrelevant, I’m afraid. You are to drop that project forthwith. Let your deputy tie up the loose ends … in a week at the latest. I need all your team to concentrate its efforts on a new aspect of the Wofops that is bothering us.”

  “And that is?”

  “I’ll fill you in tomorrow on that. Be in my office at 9.00 hours.” Seth frowned. “Our scanners are all on line with that project. Something gone wrong?”

  “I said tomorrow … but quite simply, well-armed militias are taking over many of our farms. Remember how, years ago, mobs controlled drug production? All I can say for now is that they are doing the same thing with many of the world’s main food production sites. We need to hit back and … look; I’ll fill you in tomorrow, Hellman.”

  ………. Seth swung the car door shut with a flourish and watched the front door of his house. His young tiger with the wounded leg would often burst out and race, as best he could, across the clipped grass to welcome his dad home from work as soon as he heard the car door slam. Today nothing, so Seth shrugged and his hand tightened on his briefcase. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to hear another episode from Ginny about Kevin being bullied at school. As he reached the front door he breathed out, turned the handle and stepped inside. Ginny was standing by the banister rail and one look at the wetness in her eyes told him that, yes, another episode was awaiting him.

  “Hi, hon,” he said softly and walked swiftly across to her to give the hug he knew she needed. He gently finger-combed her hair out of her eyes and looked down into them. “More trouble?”

  “You bet,” her voice trembled. “Same crowd. The McMorris gang. I’m going to the see the head tomorrow. They gotta do something.”

  “Want me along? I’ve got something I could happily miss in the morning.”

  “You’ve got your troubles too, I know. Ceri-Baker. Has he closed down the Eye-am watch?”

  “You’ve guessed it. It’s all about food production now … you know, hon; the Wofops thing. At least I’ve still got a job.”

  They turned together into the kitchen and Seth fished a beer out of the fridge. “Where’s the tiger? Is Kev in his room? I’ll bet he’s hurtin’.”

  “Yeah, he’s up there. He took it as well as you mig
ht expect but … guess what his answer is?”

  Seth snorted good-humouredly. “I know. I’ve heard it before. He wants some muscle. Protection. Like Keith has.” Ginny nodded. “I must admit, Gin, I feel like just happening along up there one day with a baseball bat.”

  “Don’t even think it, Seth. These kids have older brothers and mix with older kids … and they have some pretty rough parents. They’re organised too. And they don’t care. They don’t seem to live normal lives like most folk around here. They look out for people to pick on. Don’t get us into a head-on with that bunch, Seth.”

  “I guess you’re right. It doesn’t help that the McMorris tribe have a cop in the family. I wouldn’t trust that Lewis guy as far as I could throw him.” He finished his drink. “I’ll pop up and see Kev.”

  “Okay. I’ll put the steaks on.”

  “Sounds good.” He kissed Ginny and clattered up the stairs.

  ………. The general’s sanctum was large and private at the end of the main office in the military complex that had been built onto the once privately owned Caltech. It was the HQ of the World Foods Protection Agency, a subdivision of the political AmStatesFed. The main office was an open plan affair where about fifty staff were usually to be found immersed in computer scanning, the image streaming coming from satellites, drones and a fixed surveillance system. About the same number of operatives were out and about at meetings or organising defence units.

  When Seth weaved his way through the main office the next morning towards the general’s office he noticed a stranger sitting close to the master-sergeant by the general’s door. The msg looked up but didn’t introduce the man by his side.