Come Back Page 5

  "They decided yet?" I enquired after some minutes of heavy breathing.

  "What do you think?" She replied, sighing. "Jules and Elizabeth want to gaze at trees and pond life all day with Marie. Hilary wants to measure everything in the atmosphere and the sea while Bradley wants to catch butterflies."

  "Mary, Mike?" I enquired gently.

  "I think...I think they want to find something to kill." She said unsteadily, gazing at her hands which were full of ammunition.

  "It'll pass." I told her confidently. "Mary's got her good points and Mike will start watching them soon enough."

  "Haven't you any sensitivity?" She cried. "They've been betrayed and the bottom has just fallen out of their lives." She regarded me like a cat seeing food.

  "No it hasn't." I said firmly. "Keep a sense of proportion. We're looking at something that killed five billion people. They're lucky and so are we."

  For an instant she just sat there and stared at me, and then the tears started so I folded her in a hug and held her tight so she couldn't see my own tears. We had a long way to go, further than anyone in human history and it was up to us to decide whether there was going to be any more human history. But neither of us could forget the millions long gone or the many that we had known, friends and colleagues now dust. Were we doing the right thing? I didn't know, but tomorrow we would find out.

  Chapter 4

  DOWN TO EARTH

  The ship coasted serenely towards the blue ball that grew ever larger until it filled the forward screens with bright splendour. All the main engines had been shut down except auxiliary motors running for life support and sensor function. The fusion process was in suspension, programmed to restart at regular intervals to charge the power. According to the ever-willing computers, the ship would remain in working order, ready to fly to the stars, for centuries.

  We, however, had had enough of flying to the stars and wanted nothing better than to go back and bask in the sun, our sun. Circumstances combined to prevent the life of easy fame we, or at least I, had expected. We had to get off this hulk before civil war broke out, but the brains trust could not agree on the landing place. Linda and I finished our loading of essentials through the airlock into the dark depths of lander two and joined the discussion with sinking morale. If they couldn't even agree where to go, what hope for future progress?

  Bradley Smith was the only one showing a glimmer of common sense and he greeted our entry with a kind of grinning scowl. "Listen, man." He pointed a large finger at me. "You got to exercise some muscle here or we all end up chicken feed."

  The rest sat back and simmered while Mary looked at me miserably. The subject had indeed formed part of my conversation with Linda who shared my views about choices. There were good choices and not so good and we wouldn't know the difference until we were down. There were, however, some basics we could agree on.

  "We want to be near water, fresh water." Linda stated firmly. "We don't want extreme climate. We also need to be within striking distance of the sea." She added, the others all staring at her as if she had just corrected Einstein. "It could be the only source of food." She explained.

  "A continent, not an island." Bradley announced, glaring at Elizabeth who shrugged.

  "Right." I banged my fist down on the Mercator projection they were all crowding round. Everyone jumped except Linda who smiled. "That's obvious but we need to think deeper."

  "What the hell went on, eh?" Mike muttered.

  "Correct." Mary showed some signs of animation, staring at the chart. "And that means, well...what?" She peered at me over the map.

  "Max and co had a good idea." I said thoughtfully. "It's not just a question of turning ourselves into Neolithic man and rubbing sticks together. We want to find out what the hell happened and we want to know if anyone survived and where are they?"

  "Those underground installations." Elizabeth said suddenly, nervously twisting her long brown hair through her fingers. "Fifty levels down some of them. Sealed off they would preserve anything with the deep frost equipment. The Americans and Western Europe made provision for any extinction event, you know, seeds and so on."

  "We don't need bloody seeds." Mike interjected. "The whole planet is full of the things."

  "No." She explained patiently. "But where there are seeds there are other things."

  "Such as?" Bradley Smith frowned until his eyebrows met in the middle.

  "Knowledge. Machine templates, stores of chemicals difficult to extract if you don't know how. Medical supplies, a racial survival kit."

  "And records." I added.

  "I don't want to go to America." Mary stated firmly. "Their command centres are miles from anywhere, their cities are too far apart, we could take years finding anything."

  Jules sat up. "France!" He exclaimed and smiled widely. Marie simply nodded as if it was obvious, staring at me with raised eyebrows.

  Bradley Smith and his willowy consort, Hilary, who had so far said nothing, glanced at each other. "We agree." She said quietly. "With no powered transport we have to go somewhere where we can walk from one town to another without taking months." She smoothed her black hair and let us see white teeth against her dark skin. "We don't want to take chances. We could be all that's left and we have to keep together where we don't face dangerous reptiles or insects."

  Bradley looked disappointed at the loss of opportunity to peer at giant spiders, but he nodded gloomily. "Got no choice as I see it, man." Mary and Mike nodded their heads in unison, so it seemed we had a consensus.

  "There's only one place in Europe, the launch complex in Southern France." Linda said decisively, glancing at me. She knew what I was thinking. Why had Max been so hostile to the idea? Was there something there he didn't want us to see? What could there be after four hundred years? "It was a converted cold war bunker, three hundred feet under the rock." She continued. "They put masses of stuff there and it was the European Union archive centre as well as the Northern Hemisphere control headquarters."

  "Plenty of other places." Mike said, frowning. "The UK..."

  "An island." I pointed out politely.

  "All right, what about the Russian war bunkers..."

  "Too damned cold." Bradley Smith said loudly.

  "Where are Max and the Junta going?" Mary looked up quickly as she asked the question.

  "A good point and I don't know the answer but I'm willing to guess that they're going to Montana."

  "Montana?" Elizabeth frowned as if my suggestion was made by a cretin. "Why on earth go to Montana?"

  "The mountain retreat." Jules said suddenly. "Captain Sorenson, 'e was from American Air Force, oui?" He nodded energetically.

  "And that's where the North American Command was." Bradley agreed. "A whole mountain hollowed out. They reckoned that the President could run the whole country from there. It had nuclear generators, reservoirs, food for millions, every damned thing. What if Max knows the way in?"

  "But we go to France, yes?" Marie glanced sideways at me. "Everything the Americans have, it was duplicated, n'est pas? And the stores, the minerals, the medicines, they will be there."

  They all looked at me, even Linda. It dawned on me that with Max's sudden removal from grace they needed a captain to give them orders and they all knew about my Army background, well some of it. Most of it I had not even told Linda about, but it didn't matter now.

  "How long before orbit?" I asked her.

  Mary and Linda fell on the command keyboards and tapped rapidly while the rest watched nervously. "We're entering orbit in two hours, thirteen minutes. The drop point for the lander to hit Southern France will be forty-eight minutes after that."

  "We need a flat area, half a mile long." I pointed out.

  That brought a flurry of activity as the combined brains pored over the immensely detailed survey results coming in. Jules said abrupt things to Marie before turning to me and pointing emphatically at the large chart we had spread out over the deck. "The centre was close to Nimes,
yes? Per'aps fifty kilometres, you see?" He put a finger on the spot as we all crowded round. "There is a mountain, well not a big mountain, maybe five 'undred metres, but they use it and put the antenna on top?" He turned his head, bird like to see if I was with him.

  "So?" Bradley demanded. "What's new?"

  "At Nimes there was an airfield, you see?" Marie put her delicate finger on the spot. "A military base? Yes? Close to the river."

  "Gotcha." Linda said suddenly and tapped furiously at her keyboard. The main screen altered, blurred and steadied as the powerful scanners focused on a small patch of ground. "This is where the field was." She confirmed.

  "No trees." Elizabeth breathed.

  "The trees are there." Jules contradicted. "But they are small, bushes, yes?"

  We squinted at the screen. The river there wasn't a river but a canal or had been. Both banks were solid green and patches of water were totally overgrown but the forest here was interspersed with glade like areas. Matching the data bank from the memory over the real time view gave us the direction and length of the long-gone runways. Certainly there were no big trees and it was reasonably flat.

  "Should do." I muttered. "Not a bad spot. No river but the Rhone is around a couple of miles away, we can use it for transport, maybe."

  "The root systems." Jules informed me solemnly. "They cannot 'old for 'eight. The winds, they blow too strong 'ere. The Mistral." He explained as if I was worried about why the place wasn't full of hundred-foot oaks.

  "To hell with the Mistral, there's two or three feet of reinforced concrete under that lot." Mary stated, ignoring Jules hiss of outrage. "There's a couple of feet of leaf mould and stuff on top. Won't take long for the forest to take it all over."

  "Only another four hundred years." Mike said gloomily.

  "OK!" I clapped my hands loudly. "We're agreed then, are we? We go in," I glanced at the timer. "Two hours, thirty-six minutes. Load all your stuff, make sure it's well tethered, you know the drill." These people had all done this a dozen times before but not on Earth. "If there's anything we need to take, now's the time to think of it. Remember," I shot a grim look at them all. "There's no coming back."

  "Where are you going?" Linda demanded as I made to slide out of the bridge.

  "Get me a flight path." I told her. "I'm going to talk to the junta."

  We were all bemused, treating this like an expedition to a pleasant but foreign country. It hadn't hit us yet, and I include myself, that we were going to be more alone down there than we ever were on Alpha Centauri. The ghosts of the past were going to take us over unless we fought hard, fought our inner selves, the devils of despair and desolation that were going to hit us when we walked around a lost world. We were facing problems we couldn't foresee. We had four men and five women, all of whom were capable of having children, but could we, should we? What would we tell them? How could we look after them?

  Pleasant thoughts of this nature eddied through my head as I made my way to the entrance lock for the second globe where all our ex-companions were no doubt playing patience. By the complicated hatch there was an interface monitor that responded when I tapped in the right code and Max's face appeared on the screen, looking much as usual, calm and commanding.

  "Just to keep you up to date." I told him cheerily. "Come to tell you the latest news."

  "Very civilised of you." He seemed amused, but I was watching the array of lights and schematics beside my monitor.

  "I see you've removed my time lock from the hatches." I commented. "Good practice for you."

  "We thought you might like to have a leaving party." Selena's face popped up next to him.

  "We'll take a rain check." I told her. "The charge on this lock." I pointed to the master hatch controls which were out of their line of sight. "Is not susceptible to computer tinkering so don't bother." I grinned at them. "You may not believe this, but I hope, we all hope that you survive and prosper." They didn't respond so I shrugged. "The charge will go to safe in three hours."

  "You don't know what you've done." Selena said. "We might have..."

  "Have what?" I enquired. "Might all have died of boredom up here? Where are your targets?"

  "Why should you care?" Max's smile was even and untroubled which worried me. "You've stolen what you want and you're leaving the ship like rats. Worry about what's waiting for you."

  I was worried, but puzzled as well. The conversation wasn't leading anywhere so I signed off and drifted back to the airlock leading to where lander two was clamped against the outer hull. Much activity was going on, figures energetically passing up stores and bad language. I had left our ex-friends some firearms, not many, and not too much ammunition. The chemical and fancy electronic weaponry had been jettisoned leaving us with small arms and portable detector units, movement sensors plus night sight generators. We had lightweight tents and sleeping bags, courtesy of the original stores, a mass of medical stuff and a collection of odds and ends that the brains kept thinking of. I hoped they realised that we had to carry all this and stood watching the activity while I tried to pin down what was ringing alarm bells in my head.

  The bridge interface brought up all their records but poring over their personal details told me nothing I didn't know. What was the common factor that bound Max, Selena and Mark? They clearly had hidden orders that the rest of us didn't know about and they must have had them from the beginning. So had I, come to that, but that didn't solve the jigsaw. I just didn't see why they all suddenly became military minded and cold blooded. They didn't want to go to France so where were they going? Montana? Where else was there to go? If we all went down together our chances were hugely better, but they obviously didn't want that, and they were prepared to sentence half the crew to death to get what they did want but what the hell was it? And they were resigned to us going, the message came over strongly. Not that they could do much about it but all the same...

  "Forgotten something?" The voice whispered in my ear and Linda's soft breast brushed against my head as she came up behind me. I hadn't forgotten what she felt like and what she meant to me, so I pulled her down on my lap and we shut out the bleak future for a few seconds, her curves molding into me as we tasted each other.

  "Mm." I murmured. "We'll have to see if those sleeping bags take two."

  "Who wants a sleeping bag? We'll be under the stars." She replied dreamily.

  "Under a cloud of bugs as well." I said sternly. She laughed, sat up and pushed the mass of autumn tinted hair off her face.

  "What were you looking for?" She asked, peering at the screens showing all the personal records of the junta. "How did you get into this program? Common factors?" She ran her eyes over the data while that splendid brain leaped ahead of me. "They all had some kind of pact, it's obvious. Mm? They went to Florida for training but so did we, hum. Not much else."

  "Fifteen minutes!" Mary's voice penetrated our seclusion.

  Twisting round I saw her just inside the bridge hatchway, a smile on her face, her black hair shining in the light. "We're coming." I told her.

  "I can see that." She replied tartly and departed.

  We had an hour to go but the lander needed all its systems checked plus the glide path locked on. Linda and I cast a last look around the familiar deck where we had spent so many hours looking at wonders, so many hours chatting to Max and not seeing what was under that easy smile. I still didn't know.

  The lander was cramped. The extra seating had been difficult to fit, nine passengers was four more than designed. The seat guides were stressed but not tested plus stores crammed every square inch. Mary was the co-pilot and was already deep in the check program as I slid into the control chair.

  "We're fifty-three kilograms overweight." She said tersely.

  My professional reply was interrupted by sobs from behind me in the passenger seating. Hilary was bent over, her shoulders heaving as Bradley put powerful arms round her. "It's so sudden, all this." She choked. "We could have spent days looking for answer
s...instead we go like criminals instead of scientists."

  "No choice is there?" Mike interjected sourly. "Mighty Max and Silky Selena think they've got shooting rights."

  "She's right." Elizabeth stared at us with tears running down her cheeks. "What are we? Rats from a sinking ship? What do we do? Go back to being savages?"

  "It's a long jump from the twenty third century back to three thousand BC." Bradley's rich voice rumbled over us. "We won't make it, but our kids will if we let them."

  That brought a dismayed silence until Linda shook her head. "We know how things work and they didn't." She said firmly. "We can start again."

  "Too late for all that now." I said cheerfully. "How long to detach?"

  Mary gave me a dark eyed glare as if I was slightly demented. "Thirteen minutes." She replied softly, still staring at me. "I don't know about you, neither does anyone else, even Linda. All this time you amble along, grinning and cracking jokes but inside you're someone else."

  "Let's have the post mortem when we're down." I said evenly. "Check list complete?"

  "I told you, we're over weight."

  "We'll ride it." I said confidently, catching Linda's eye. She was behind me, crammed against Elizabeth. The rows of rigid seats were lash up jobs and I hoped the auto pilot was feeling brisk. Fifty kilograms wasn't serious, I knew we had margins but re-entry had to be smooth. Any violent G-force and those emergency seats could part company with the deck, not to mention the masses of ill secured stores. Scanning the flight panels, we seemed all in the green. Full fuel, wings locked back for re-entry, heat shield deployed, navi system running. The main screen showed the cloud deck under us as the ship entered its orbit.

  My skills as a pilot were limited but the genius level computer would compensate for that. "Target plugged in?" I pushed Mary to take an interest. "Time of touch down?"