Planet America (30 page)

The personal weapons these troops were carrying with them seemed elderly, too. They looked like ray guns issued to the Fourth Empire's units several hundred years before. This did not mean they were any less deadly, though. Same for the literally thousands of battlefield weapons in evidence around the sprawling base. These included an incredible number of Master Blasters, smaller death-tube arrays, and even some antique sonic guns. All this made the pop guns employed by the bad guys back on Tonk look puny by comparison. And it was a lot of stuff for such an isolated place far beyond the edge of the Galaxy.

Hunter folded his flying machine into a Twenty 'n Six and began walking. His ray gun was up and ready, only because it made him feel better. Could he actually fire his weapon effectively while operating inside the one-step-ahead situation? He didn't know. Though he'd exchanged gunfire inside the xarcus with some mysterious enemy troops, looking back on it, he believed that gun battle might have been fought in a different time or dimension entirely. His theory now was that yes, he
could
probably fire the handgun, but the deadly ray it emitted would most likely show up an hour or two later. He kept the gun up in front of him anyway.

He passed through the crowded administrative and control areas of the base, seeing lots but learning little about this powerful garrison army. Their uniforms bore no markings, and there were no flags or banners about. Obviously, the huge army was, in a sense, working undercover. He wandered through its transport yards, taking note of the hundreds of troop shuttles, gleaming under the weak yellow sun. These were not the Bugs he'd traveled in during his first trip on an Empire ship. Those little scooters could barely carry a hundred soldiers for a distance never exceeding the trip down from orbit. Though they looked dated as well, these shuttles could accommodate at least a thousand men each and were big enough to take them clear across a good-sized solar system. There was no doubt that these vessels could reach any of the Home Planets quickly and deliver an enormous space army to their surface, ready for battle.

Or was
invasion force
a better term?

He walked the length of the congested space launch farm. There were twelve gigantic docking ports here that could handle big ships, and hundreds of smaller pads where patrol craft and sky cars were maintained. At the end of this mile-long stretch of tarmac was a long, tubular building emitting a barely visible yet clearly sparkling stream of greenish mist. This was an ion-ballast works. While the much quicker technology of Supertime was used exclusively by Empire spacecraft, the vast majority of flying things in the Galaxy were powered by ion-ballast-fueled engines. This facility was big enough to provide plentiful energy for ion spacecraft of all sizes.

It was most interesting that every one of the large spacecraft bays was holding a vessel in stasis. Twelve bays, twelve ships. That probably meant there were no sizable spacecraft out patrolling in the star system somewhere. In fact, except for the small atmospheric craft and sky cars, it seemed to Hunter that much of this hardware had been sitting here, planet bound, for a long, long time.

Like a phantom, he moved around the base for the equivalent of a half hour, counting weapons, noting ammunition bunkers, estimating troop strength. He was gathering a lot of intelligence, some of it valuable, but Hunter was not yet satisfied. He'd confirmed that yes, the holo-spy was right, there was an enormous army out here, apparently poised to strike anywhere, at any time. But he still needed to know two important things: Who were these guys, and why were they out here? He couldn't leave until he found out.

He managed to locate the base's intelligence building. It was the structure with the highest number of communications bubblers on its roof. He passed through the main entrance with no problem and was soon standing in the central control room of the place. There were at least two hundred technicians at work here, monitoring various scanning arrays. At the center of the room there stood a large black box with a red light attached to its top and an enormous Klaxon protruding from its midsection.

Hunter approached the black box and, after studying its bare controls and eavesdropping on its attendant gang of techs, discovered that the monolith was actually a very simple warning device, one that would erupt whenever a certain kind of event was detected. A bank of thirty-six screens nearby told a further tale. This array of monitors was zoomed in on the Home Planets, one screen devoted to each of the three dozen worlds.

But what kind of event were they looking for?

Hunter studied the screen showing Planet America. It was just a static image of the green and blue ball, spinning through space. The attending devices didn't appear to be monitoring the planet's overall puff or working any kind of time bubble maintenance. Instead, the numbers running down the screen itself were labeled in various atmospheric measurements, such as air pressure, temperature, wind speed, and so on. The monitors seemed built to detect minute changes inside the atmospheres below.

One of a long line of light panel controllers was marked with an icon that Hunter interpreted to be the system's simulation . test. Without really thinking about it, he gave this button a push. Instantly, the live shot of Planet America turned into a lifelike graphic of the tiny world. The words: "Event Detection" began flashing on the screen. A tiny flash of bright light began rising from the landmass below. It grew brighter and brighter, a long smoky tail flowing from behind. The atmospheric readings running down the side of the screen—they, too, were part of the simulation—were going crazy. Several more warning flashes appeared. One said: "Event in Progress." Then the bright pinprick of light reached "orbit" around the graphic of the planet, and that's when the gigantic black box erupted with flashing red lights and skull-fracturing sound.

Hunter immediately cupped his ears and averted his eyes from the strobing light, but of course no one else in the room could see or hear any of it. In their reality, the simulated warning device hadn't gone off yet. And it probably wouldn't for at least another hour or so.

Hunter quickly released the sim panel button and the box stopped flashing and bleating. Everything went back to normal. It took a few moments for Hunter to get his senses back.

It had been painful to his cranium, but snooping in the right place had solved one mystery. These thirty-six arrays were looking for only one thing: evidence that any of the planets below was about to achieve spaceflight. If a successful launch was detected, the buzzer would blare and the blinding red light would flash until eyes hurt and ears began to bleed.

So this was actually a tripwire station, the means by which the mysterious celestial guards kept track of their unwitting prisoners below. There was beauty in the simplicity of this. How best do you keep prisoners in the prison? You monitor each planet around the clock, looking for the one sign that would indicate that the planet's inhabitants had reached the point of trying to get off, unintentionally trying to break out of jail. Then, presumably,
boom)
. That's when the hammer came down.

Was this an explanation for the periodic disasters that had befallen Planet America every few centuries? The same apocalypses the holo-spy had warned them about? Was it simply part of the makeup of the people back there to try to escape their confines, unwittingly bringing catastrophe down on themselves? Could it be the same on the other planets as well?

Hunter was beginning to think so.

But why hadn't this gaggle of detectors spotted him leaving Planet America's atmosphere? Was it because his craft emitted things that these monitors could not detect?

He thought this as well.

Time to move on. He decided to find the most sensitive area of the entire intelligence complex, a place where all the top secrets would be stored. He eventually came upon a large vault, ironically on the top floor of the multistoried building. There were a dozen techs and several armed guards inside this secure room; the vault itself was open. Hunter simply walked inside.

The vault was eerily similar to the one under Weather Mountain. Lots of numbered doors containing pull-out drawers. But instead of holding artifacts, these drawers contained suspended droplets of liquid ether. One drop contained ten-to-the-twentieth-power bits of information. The drops were files; you put them on your tongue, and suddenly you knew their contents. Amazing technology, yet it was more than a thousand years old.

Hunter knew he didn't have much time left. The dreamy nature of this invisible exercise made it almost impossible to tell how many virtual minutes had gone by since the start of it. Nor was he sure just how far in the future one hundred times around this moon would put him. Certainly no more than two hours or so. By his estimate then, he only had about another twenty minutes or so left on the ground before he had to think about getting out. So instead of going through all the liquid files, he began a search for the one drawer that appeared to be holding the most secret information of all. He found just such a drawer at the rear of the vault. Its door was painted white with bright red stripes crossing through it. A holo-sign indicated only the top echelon of the base's command structure had access to the contents. A neutron lock kept the door sealed tight.

Hunter bore through the subatomic clasp with ease; all he had to do was disengage the quarks from the larks with the aid of his electron torch. His hunch about this drawer paid off. Inside he found not a miniocean of brain drops but a set of mind rings. One was marked "Mission Background, Day One. Guard Duty. Year 3237."

It was just what he was looking for.

Without hesitation, Hunter took off his helmet and jammed the mind ring onto his head.

Flash
!

He was suddenly standing in a crowded spaceport. Everywhere he looked, he could see gigantic rocket towers spiraling overhead. And people. Everywhere. Millions of them.

He looked down at his clothes. He was wearing a bright green battle suit with thick epaulets on the shoulders and a long, flowing cape. He had a helmet under one arm, an ancient style atomic rifle under the other. He was a soldier. He looked around and for almost as far as he could see, there were soldiers wearing the exact same uniform as he.

And the strange thing was, Hunter knew where he was. The gigantic spaceport, the monstrous launch towers and galleys. The electric city across the river to the west. He was on Earth, at the Eff-Kay Jack spaceport. The lighted metropolis spread across the horizon was Big Bright City, the capital of Earth— but as it looked almost four thousand years before.

What was going on here? Hunter joined one stream of soldiers who were walking toward one of the gigantic launch gantries. The spacecraft attached to this tower was at least two thousand feet high. It was also very bulbous, with a blunt, pointed nose and tiny fins on its rear. At this moment, they seemed to be the only thing supporting the rocket's massive weight.

This rocket was painted bright green, as were all the others in the gigantic forest of spaceships. There were loading ramps sticking out of the bottom of this rocket, twelve in all, ringing the spaceship like spokes. There were literally thousands of people climbing these gangways, all of them civilians. They were being herded onto the gigantic spaceship by soldiers wearing the same caped uniforms.

He stayed attached to the loose column of soldiers. They marched about a half mile down the spaceport's tarmac before turning in to the launch area of the next green spaceship in line. Like with all the vessels he could see, people were being marched onto this spacecraft as well. Hunter's detachment of soldiers wound up relieving another unit that had been manning the entrance to one of these crowded gangways. The soldiers were pushing along anyone not moving fast enough up the narrow ramp. Hunter nudged his way to the front of the line and eventually found himself not fifty feet away from the entrance to the gangway.

Nearby, he saw hundreds of people—men, women, seniors, kids—being deposited in a huge receiving area by sinister-looking shuttle craft flitting in and out. After a quick security bath, these people were being pushed toward the ramp and eventually into the ship itself. Some were carrying baggage. Very few were wearing very much more than the clothes on their back.

Above the entrance to the gangway was a sign that was engraved with characters, many of which were too small for Hunter to see. But at the top of the poster, he thought he recognized six words: "By Order of the Second Empire ..." Stationed next to the sign was an ancient deatomizing device. Within its chambers were bits and pieces of burnt cloth, the remnants of lackadaisical pulverization. Each bit of this cloth was either red, white, or blue. Each had once been a piece of a flag.

Hunter just froze on the spot. It all became so clear now. Even though the mind ring had probably originated as an orientation tool for up-and-coming prison guards, it had told him just about everything he needed to know on this subject.

These were the people of America being deported from Earth more than 3,900 years ago. They looked beleaguered, bitter, angry, lost. Hunter didn't have to go any further into the mind ring to know where the big green ships went once they'd blasted off for space. And he didn't have to inspect the ashes of the deatomizing machine to know its job was to destroy the Americans' flags. This was a forced deportation. The Americans were being shipped out of their own country.

Hunter found an anger building so deep inside him he thought it would affect this little mind trip he was on. All he knew was he had to get the mind ring off his head now and return to whence he came. But just as he was reaching up to remove his headgear, a person passing by in a group heading toward the gangplank caught his attention: blond, blue eyes, cheeks that were pink because she smiled so much.... It was Ashley.

She was dressed differently, and she wasn't smiling at all now, but Hunter was sure it was her.