The Mothership (21 page)

Laura nodded. “Yes. Have we met?”

“I am Bandaka. Saw you once. My daughter
take you bird to heal.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mapuruma.”

Laura tied to remember a young girl by that
name, but couldn’t place her.

Beckman studied the hunter’s weapons. “How
can your spears penetrate those machines?”

Bandaka raised one of his spears for
Beckman to study, indicating the blackened point. “Stone tip, very hard.” In
the same hand, he held up a paddle-like object about a meter long. “Use spear
thrower.” He dropped his club, then attached his spear to a notch at the end of
the paddle and demonstrated how to use the spear thrower.

“It’s like a lever,” Laura explained. “They
can throw a spear two to three times further with it than by hand. It’s
commonly known as a Woomera. The missile test range down south is named after
it.”

Hooper studied the primitive weapon with
growing understanding. “With the stone tip and the thrower, those spears pack a
punch.”

“Wood very hard,” Bandaka said, showing how
he could not flex it. “Fire make it harder.”

“It’s not steel,” Laura explained, “But it
is one of the hardest woods on earth.”

Beckman remembered the metal skin on the
seekers was thin, built for low weight, not strength. They were clearly fast,
vulnerable scouts. What worried him was the other machine Bandaka had seen, the
one they’d run from. What was it, he’d said?
Can’t fight that one
.

Bandaka scooped up his club and started
walking again. The hunter considered telling Beckman about Mulmulpa’s warning,
but they came upon Cougar before he could speak. The sniper was propped against
a tree, his head and shoulders wrapped in nano membrane penetrated by a
breathing tube Xeno had inserted in his mouth to give him air. She now worked
desperately to prevent the milky white substance from enveloping the breathing tube
and cutting off his air supply while the rest of the team had formed a
defensive circle around them.

“There’s no way to cut this stuff,” Xeno
said in a brittle voice.

Dr McInness knelt beside Cougar and pulled
at the nano membrane with tweezers, testing its elasticity, watching how it
fought to fully envelop the sniper. “This behavior isn’t chemical. It’s
programmed, perhaps the moment it was sprayed.” Dr McInness touched the
membrane with his forefinger. “It doesn’t run up my hand. It’s not programmed to
do that.”

“So how do we get this stuff off?” Beckman
demanded impatiently.

Dr McInness released the piece of nano
membrane he’d been testing near Cougar’s cheek. “There must be a trigger, an
instruction that turns it off. The problem is, we don’t know what it is, or
even how to transmit it.”

Laura struggled against her bonds, finding
she could move slightly, but if she pushed too far, the nano membrane tightened
its grip, constricting her movement. “If they’re machines, can’t we cut their
power?”

Dr McInness brightened. “They might be too
small to have their own power supply. If so, they must be drawing power from
their environment.”

“Like plants?” Laura asked, looking at the
forest around them. “Plants use photosynthesis.”

“I was thinking of something more on the
quantum level,” Dr McInness said absently, then he realized he was over
thinking the problem. His eyes widened and he exclaimed, “We need a blanket!”

Xeno retrieved a Mylar first aid blanket
from her medical kit for Dr McInness.

“Wrap it around him, tightly,” Dr McInness
said.

She did as she was told, completely
covering Cougar’s head and shoulders and holding the edges down tightly to
block out the light. She waited a few seconds, then Cougar threw off the
blanket and jumped to his feet, spitting the tube out of his mouth. Sliding
down his shirt was a dull metallic gray ooze that formed into globules and fell
onto the ground creating small viscous pools at his feet.

“Light is energy!” Dr McInness declared
happily. “When its power supply is cut off, in this case solar power, its
memory is wiped!” He dived into his pack and produced a small, stoppered test
tube. “Hold still,” he commanded as he scraped ooze into the tube from Cougar’s
shirt before it fell to the ground.

Xeno shook the remaining memory wiped nano
machines from the blanket, then wrapped Laura in it. A few seconds later, Laura
pushed the blanket away.

“That stuff’s disgusting!” Laura said as
she shook nano ooze from her clothes.

Xeno shook the blanket clean again, then
turned to Beckman. “OK Major, you’re next.”

“Wait!” Dr McInness said, placing a hand on
Xeno’s arm. “Major, do you mind if I conduct an experiment?”

Beckman scowled. “You’re kidding?”

“One minute,” Dr McInness pleaded, “That’s
all.”

Markus, who’d been watching proceedings
curiously, added, “Could be useful intelligence.”

Beckman sighed. “Make it quick.”

Dr McInness scooped up a large blob of
memory wiped nano ooze from the ground, then splashed it onto the nano membrane
imprisoning Beckman. The nano ooze turned from a dull mercury gray to milky
white as it merged into the active membrane and immediately expanded down
Beckman’s leg and up his chest.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Beckman demanded
anxiously.

Dr McInness looked delighted. “Did you see
that?” He glanced around at the others. “The programmed part passed
instructions to the memory wiped part!”

“Get this alien crap off me!” Beckman
ordered. “Now!”

Xeno wrapped the blanket tightly around
Beckman, with Hooper’s help. Beckman felt the pressure on his legs and arm vanish,
then they released him from the blanket and the nano ooze dripped onto the
ground. While he was still flicking the last of the ooze onto the ground,
Liyakindirr appeared followed by Djapilawuy and little Mapuruma. Ambling a
short distance behind them was old Mulmulpa.

Bandaka smiled with relief at the sight of
the tribal elder, although the seriousness on the old man’s face was
unmistakable. Bandaka introduced his wife and daughter, then Mulmulpa.

“You boss man?” Mulmulpa asked, looking at
Beckman with the same doubt hardened drill sergeants had shown when he was a
first year cadet at West Point.

“I am.”

Mulmulpa appraised him carefully, then said
ominously, “You go back, while you can,”

“I can’t do that.”

Mulmulpa leaned toward him. “You don’t understand.
Even the spirits have gone.” The old man looked up through the trees at the
shimmering dome overhead. “The sky is lost.”

Laura studied Mulmulpa. He looked familiar,
but she couldn’t recall where she’d seen him. “We’re going to the Goyder River.”

Mulmulpa turned his attention to her. “You
balanda
women who study animals.”

She nodded, remembering
balanda
was
a corruption of the word Hollander, the word the Yolngu used to refer to all
Europeans. It was an ancient reference to the time when the Dutch had ruled the
East Indies to the north of Australia, now modern day Indonesia.

Mulmulpa looked grave. “No go there. Only
death on that river.”

“My husband is there.” Laura explained. “We
could use your help.”

“We go to the coast,” Mulmulpa replied,
glancing at Mapuruma and her mother.

“If there is a problem, you won’t be safe
on the coast,” Beckman said. “You won’t be safe anywhere.”

Mulmulpa nodded. “I know.”

“We have weapons, and training,” Beckman
said, “But we’d have a better chance with your help.”

Mulmulpa looked at their weapons
unimpressed. “You fix the sky?”

Beckman glanced at the blurred curtain
shrouding the skies above. “We’ll try.”

Mulmulpa realized their path had already
been decided, otherwise, why would they have found the soldiers? Why would the
balanda
women be with them? Mulmulpa remembered her husband, an honest man who’d once
given him a ride in his four-wheel-drive and was now missing. Somehow, the
spirits had brought them together.

Mulmulpa relented to his fate. “OK. I show
you bad spirits. You see. Come, come.” He pointed to the northwest, motioning
for Beckman to follow.

Beckman motioned for Hooper to spread the
team in a skirmish line behind them, then he nodded to the old man. “OK, show
me the bad spirits.”

* * * *

Bill steered the
fishing boat through increasingly steep walled gorges strewn with pencil-thin
waterfalls. The canyons were stifling cauldrons choked by still air and searing
heat, while the buzz of insects lulled the senses. Occasionally they glimpsed
the great red sandstone massif of Parsons Range to the west, towering above
verdant forest. When the canyon walls closed in, they spotted shapes painted in
the shadowed recesses beneath sheer rock faces, the work of long dead
aboriginal artists depicting ancient spirits and dreamtime legends. How old
these paintings were, they couldn’t tell, for this truly was a land lost to
time.

They scanned the banks and murky waters of
the river, searching for a suitable landing spot. Everywhere they looked, they
found crocodiles, more than fifty every kilometer, most over two meters in
length. They all knew the stories of how big the creatures had been, up to nine
meters long with jaws large enough for a man to stand in. That had been in the
early twentieth century, before the great reptiles had been hunted almost to
extinction for their skins. Now that they were protected and growing in size
and numbers again, it was only a matter of time before monsters once again
ruled the remote northern rivers.

Anxious to avoid the larger predators, they
pressed on up river to where the waters narrowed. Bill selected a stretch of
river bank, where gorge walls gave way to a shelving slope beneath a tree
covered plateau. He nosed the fishing boat in toward the west bank, barely a
kilometer south of rocky falls that blocked further navigation. Towering
overhead, the translucent energy dome stretched from one horizon to the other,
dulling the normally vibrant blue sky and filtering the tropical sun of its
harsh glare. When the boat bumped ashore, Wal leapt off the bow and tied a line
to a stunted tree. They then unloaded everything except the beer and fresh
food, which they decided to leave in the boat’s cooler until their camp was
established.

“There’s a pair of eyes over there,”
Cracker reported casually, nodding to a stretch of river bank hidden beneath a
tangle of pandanus palms.

“Where?” Wal asked apprehensively.

“He won’t bother us,” Bill said,
instinctively feeling for the old nine millimeter pistol strapped to his hip.

They carried their gear up the slope to the
plateau, then followed a small stream inland until they found a suitable
campsite. With nothing but water to quench their thirst, they were eager to get
back down to the boat, but called a short break to catch their breaths.

“Whose stupid idea was it to camp up here?”
Slab growled as he flopped down beside the stream, splashing handfuls of water
over his head.

“At least there are no crocs up here,” Wal
said brightly.

“Yeah, that’s because crocs aren’t stupid!”
Slab snapped.

“You could always keep them company down by
the river,” Cracker said.

“Not bloody likely.”

They hurried back down to the boat, then
gathered around the bow, waiting in hope as Bill climbed aboard and rummaged
through a locker.

After a minute, he held up an old nylon
fishing net triumphantly. “Found it!” They knew he planned to tie the net to a
tree, put the beer cans in the net and sink it in the river to keep them cold.

“Nature’s esky!” Wal declared happily.

Bill pocketed the net, then retrieved
several large cardboard boxes of beer from the boat’s freezer and passed them
to Slab, who balanced one on each shoulder. He was about to turn back to the
cooler when he noticed a broad shadow gliding across the beach toward them. His
three companions followed his confused gaze, then they looked up to see a large
rectangular, smooth skinned vehicle floating silently above them. Running
parallel along its sides were rows of glowing blue lights, while in the center
of the hull was a flat oval that filled the middle third of the vehicle’s
underbelly.

“That’s not from around here!” Cracker
said.

The flat oval surface vanished, revealing a
narrow shaft filled with two circular nozzles separated by a glowing red
square. They felt a wave of heat radiate down from the red square as if they
were looking into a blast furnace, then a beam of brilliant white light shot
down from each nozzle and locked onto the aluminum boat. The boat shuddered as
it fought against the suction of the mud, then the remaining cartons of beer
floated up out of the open cooler. One of the cartons Slab held was torn from
his grip, forcing him to wrap both hands around the other. The rectangular
cardboard beer cartons streamed up into the red square and were instantly
vaporized in flash of light, replaced by a fine mist of beer and aluminum.