Battle at Zero Point (25 page)

The old guy just shuffled his feet. "No catch," he said. "Consider it a favor."

"For a favor in return, you mean?" Hunter asked.

The old guy walked him back outside. "Let's just say I'm a curious guy," he said.

"About what exactly?"

"Who are you here to see?" the old guy asked him, suddenly dropping the aw-shucks act.

Hunter just shrugged. "I don't know," he replied truthfully.

The old guy nodded. "OK, that was a tough one," he said. "Why not just tell me why you came here?"

Hunter hesitated, but only for a second. "I was told not to talk about that," he said finally.

The old guy just shrugged again. "OK by me," he said. "After all, I just work here."

With that, he closed the hangar door and began to walk away.

Hunter stopped him.

"Wait a minute," he said. "What about my airplane?"

The old guy just looked at him and shrugged.

"What airplane?" he asked.

He disappeared around the corner of the building. Hunter walked over to the big door and slid it open.

The hangar was empty.

The old guy had vanished as well.

Though Hunter searched all around the barn for him, he was nowhere to be found. He searched inside the hangar, too. But there was absolutely no evidence to indicate his aircraft was ever there.

With little else to do, he walked back down the dusty path to the main road. Here, he found another vehicle waiting for him.

It was a sports car. It was painted deep blue and had flame decals plastered all over it. Hunter had seen a similar vehicle back on Planet America—and probably many times in his previous lives.

It was called a Corvette.

Another young kid was behind the wheel. He was about the same age as the limo driver, but he was not so dressed up. And his hair was as greasy as the mechanic's rag.

"Need a ride, mister?" he asked Hunter.

Hunter looked in all directions. There was nothing out here by the dunes and the road.

"I guess I do," he finally replied.

Seconds later, they were screaming down the winding, hilly road. Hunter was holding on for his life as the young kid wordlessly went through all five gears in about as many seconds. Hunter hadn't experienced these kind of g-forces when he was dashing across the Galaxy. And he wasn't sure, but he didn't think these Corvettes came equipped with ejection seats. He was glad he was still wearing his crash helmet.

It turned out to be a short but very fast ride. They soon found themselves driving through a more wooded area, leaving the dunes and sand behind. The temperature changed rapidly; suddenly it was cool and raw, with some mist in the air. They began climbing a hill. Hunter would have thought a downshift was in order, but his tight-lipped driver did not concur. They went right over the top of the hill, all four wheels leaving the pavement before slamming back down again.

Around one more bend, and then the kid stood on the brakes. The car came to a screaming halt.

When the dust and rubber vapor cleared, Hunter found himself looking up a steep hill. At the top was a ramshackle house with a distinct lean to the left.

Hunter looked over at the driver, who just looked back at him. It was obvious this was the end of the line.

"Keep in touch," Hunter said, climbing out of the car.

He walked up the hill toward the house. It looked more familiar to him with every step. He reached the porch to find an elderly woman coming out the front door. Hunter stopped in his tracks. She not only looked familiar, she looked like him—that is, there seemed to be a strong family resemblance.

"We've been waiting for you, Hawk!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. There was a familiar scent of chocolate and flour on her hands.

Before he could say a word, an elderly gentleman came out onto the porch as well. The man had tears in his eyes. He could have passed as Hunter himself, if Hunter was about three times his present age.

He embraced Hunter in a bear hug.

"Great to see you again, Hawk," he said.

Hunter pulled away from him.

"Who are you people?" he asked, not really sure he wanted to know.

They both laughed sweetly, but they completely avoided the question.

"Come with me," the man said instead. "I want to show you something."

Hunter followed him into the house, walked across the ancient-looking living room and into the kitchen. The man moved a false panel on the other side of the kitchen cupboard. Behind it was an elevator. It looked very cramped, and there was no light inside. Just a dull red glow from the elevator controls. The man indicated Hunter should climb in, and he did.

They rode the lift down together, not talking, Hunter barely breathing. The elevator moved very slowly and took a long time to reach its stopping point. When the door finally opened, they stepped out into an underground chamber. There was a guard post outside a huge door, but it was unmanned at the moment.

The man opened this huge door by hand, and they walked down a long corridor. Hunter imagined that they must be at least a mile underground. They reached another thick steel door. The man punched in some kind of code, and the door opened with a great
whoosh
.

Beyond was a blue-hued chamber that looked like something from a viz-screen movie set. All crackling pipes and wires and machines and test tubes, it was a madman's vision of a laboratory. The man directed Hunter inside, and they walked past many electrical devices, gizmos, and doodads. They reached another massive door. Another code, another twist of the lock, and now they were inside a very small vestibule and facing yet another door. They both stepped inside, and the man locked them in.

Hunter looked around the small metal chamber and saw some strange things. There were straps fastened securely to the sides of the walls.
Why would they be here
? he thought.
What could their
purpose be
? There was also an ordinary bucket filled to the brim with rocks.

Rocks? Why?

But even odder, in one corner of the vault was a box of parachutes.

Parachutes?

The man strapped Hunter into one of the harnesses and then did the same to himself. Then he punched another code into the lock of this fourth door. The lock spun and clicked and then sprang open.

The next thing Hunter knew, he was looking out at the clear blue sky.

This made no sense, of course; they were several thousand feet underground. Yet it all seemed familiar to him somehow.

"What is this?" Hunter asked the man. "How can this be?"

"It's called a key way," the man told him, dropping a few of the rocks through and watching them fall.

"It's a passage to other times, other dimensions. Other places."

Bits and pieces of all this were coming back to Hunter, but try as he might, he cpuld not put it all together as a whole. He began to say something, but the man held up his hand.

"Wait for it," he said.

A moment later, there came a tremendous roar, and suddenly three aircraft zoomed through the sky not a hundred feet below him, trailing long exhaust plumes.

These weren't spacecraft, Hunter knew. They were jets.
Jet fighters
. That's what his craft was—or, more accurately, used to be.

The three planes turned and passed by again. They were long and thin, very short wings, high tails.

"T-38s," Hunter whispered. Again, something from his past had gurgled up.

"That's right, Hawk," the man said to him. "Now be careful, but lean out there and get a bit of a better look."

Hunter did so, grasping the restraints tightly. About a mile or so below them was an ocean. By leaning out a little farther, Hunter could also see a large rocket-launching facility along its coast. He could clearly pick out gantries, huge control buildings, support vehicles. And people everywhere.

"Cape Canaveral," he whispered.

"Exactly," the man said.

He pulled Hunter back from the precipice.

"Let me fill you in," the man said. "Below is the Kennedy Space Center. The year is 1987. Down there, you are about to lift off as part of a crew of something called the space shuttle. In one of your lives, you will not be able to make this trip because something called World War Three is about to break out. But, if you should pass through this portal now, I can arrange for you to be in one of those jets and for it to have engine trouble and you can simply step through with a parachute, land, and be rescued. There will be no World War Three. You will be the youngest person to fly in the shuttle. You will lead an adventurous, exciting life. The life you should have led before all this craziness entered into it."

Now it was Hunter who was almost in tears.

This part of his life came flooding back to him. He was the youngest kid ever to attend MTT, the youngest ever to fly for the U.S. Air Force, the youngest ever to be accepted for a shuttle flight by NASA. World War Three, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, threw all that into turmoil and then—well, like the man said, the craziness began.

"It can be yours again, Hawk," the man told him. "Just say the word."

Hunter turned back to him. He didn't want to ask the next question, but he knew he had to.

"What's the catch?" he asked the man.

The man just smiled. He seemed like a good guy. Someone Hunter almost felt close to.

"I think you know the catch," he said. 'Tell me why you are here."

Hunter shook his head. "I can't."

'Tell me who you came here to see then," the man pressed him.

Hunter looked back through the hole in the sky. The T-38s were still flying around, and the ocean below looked very inviting. There was even a parachute within his reach. It wouldn't take much for him to slip it on. Jump through.
Go back to where it all began
…

He turned back to the man.

"Sorry," he said.

The woman was crying as Hunter walked back down the hill, leaving the old house and the strange things beneath it.

He knew what was going on here. He was being tempted with the most important things in his life.

This life. His previous life. And just as Tomm had told him through his image projection, the people doing the offering could absolutely follow through on their promises. There was no doubt in his mind about that. All Hunter had to do was break his confidence about why he came here and what was behind him seeking out the one he had to talk to—and, by inference, the end of his trip would be at hand, his mission would end, and he would go on to a much better place.

It was brilliant. Like the colossal minefields and the light-years of "barbed wire" debris and the Saturn 5s and the Phantoms, now that he was on the ground, so to speak, these temptations were just another part of a very sophisticated security system. One designed to keep whoever Hunter had to see here insulated from the rest of the Galaxy. These people didn't
really
want to know why he had come or who he was here to see. They
already
knew these things. All this was just a way of testing whether he could keep a secret or not. And that secret could only be the identity of the person he'd come here to see. But who could this special person be?

He sat at the side of the road for a few minutes before he saw another vehicle approaching.

It was an automobile but was not anywhere near as glamorous as the limo or as racy as the Corvette. It was big and green and ugly, with wood paneling, four doors, and a pull-up hatch on the back. A station wagon.

It arrived with a screech and a cloud of dust right in front of him. Another kid of about eighteen or so was behind the wheel. He seemed as bored as Hunter's first two drivers.

"Hey mister," he said wearily. "Need a ride?"

Hunter silently climbed in.

They continued down the paved road, the landscape changing from the cold and dampness of the house on the hill back to fair weather and a more rural setting.

Hunter didn't speak, and neither did his driver. The surroundings changed again, to a terrain more woodsy, and the road straightened out. They passed a sign that read
Montana Route 264
, and another spark of familiarity went off in Hunter's head. He'd seen that sign before somewhere.

They continued on, passing under an overpass, and now there were trees on either side of the roadway. A mountain loomed ahead. His driver wordlessly slowed down and turned onto an unpaved dirt road, and soon they were traveling deeper into the forest. Hunter sniffed the air and detected not just the scent of sweet pines but also that of burned rubber and combusted fuel.

The woods thinned out considerably. The stink the air was almost to overwhelming now. Around one more corner, and the driver stopped. Straight ahead, in the clearing next to the mountain, lay die remains of a large aircraft. It had fallen out of the sky, time indeterminate, but obviously quite a while ago. Hunter looked at his driver, who simply nodded, indicating Hunter should get out.

He did, and approached the crash slowly. This was an ancient airplane. Long, swept-back wings, a long silver fuselage. Very primitive thrust-producing engines on its wings, four in all. On its tail were three letters that had been painted over; but the paint had melted away in the crash. The three letters were TWA.

Hunter reached the edge of the crumpled fuselage. He knew this plane was a Boeing 707. An airliner—that's what they used to call them, way back, wherever it was he'd come from.

Though it still seemed as if the crash had happened some time ago, there was still a lot of heat around the site. The ground was steamy, and some bare patches of snow at the base of the mountain had melted into warm mud. Everything around the site was very, very quiet.

After a short climb, Hunter reached the back of the airplane. One of the rear doors had been torn off in the crash, and this provided a means of entry. He stepped inside.

The interior of the plane was empty. No seats; the plane had been a cargo carrier. He started making his way forward, naturally drawn to the cockpit. It was slow going at first: the plane's fuselage was badly crumpled. Strangely, the floor was covered with long strands of weeds—
hay
was the archaic word for it.