Authors: Gordon Mackay
The two women tried to work out what his plan might be or how he might possibly fool a surveillance system. Before they could reach any kind of logical conclusion, Scott spoke again, giving them the answer they hadn’t found.
“Because the tunnel’s so narrow and low, there’s only one way we can do this.”
While both women wanted to know how, they resisted the temptation to ask and remained silent.
“If I lie down on my front, both of you will need to lie directly on top of me, like dinner-plates stacked on a shelf, one on top of the other.”
He hesitated before saying anything else, just in case he had baffled them again, which he had. With no questions coming his way from the two faces that stared at him, he felt they weren’t quite sure.
Bending down to reach the gritty floor, he drew an outline of a person on the floor. He explained that if one person lay down with another on top, then another on top of the second, the under and overhead detectors could only see the outline of one.
“That’s brilliant,” exclaimed Belinda. “That’ll certainly give us an advantage if we can fool the little…; what was it you called them again?” she asked.
“Little buggers,” he replied.
“Yes,” she said. “The little… Grey buggers.”
Scott couldn’t help releasing another laugh as he heard her comical words. He found it so funny.
“OK,” he said again. “I’m going to lie face down and I want both of you to lie on my back, which one is on top I leave you to decide.” He really wanted to add,
said the Bishop to the actresses
, but decided he had already promised not to, so didn’t.
They all knew Phyllis was the lighter of the two, although not by much, so she was favourite to lie on
the very top to help with the balance of weight.
Scott lay down in a prone position, preparing himself for the extra weight of the two women on his back. He hoped his strength could carry them through the doorway. And even though it was only about six feet he thought it might as well be a mile. It wasn’t really far, he knew, but it was going to be one hell of an ordeal.
With Belinda above him and Phyllis perched on top, he instructed them to maintain their balance as best they could, while mimicking his movements as much as possible. With a monumental grunt and a lung-rendering wheeze, he lifted all three of them. Resembling a strong-man’s press-up in a circus to impress the audience, he raised himself higher on his arms and toes, making ready to move. The first movement was one arm forward together with the opposite foot, then the others to follow up. It was almost like some strange blue lizard carrying a momentous bulk on its back. With each straining effort he moved them forward, with slow laborious movements and deep throated grunting. It certainly felt as if he was carrying a house on his back, or might it be an entire block of flats, he reconsidered. It certainly felt like it, he thought. “Now I know how a snail must feel.”
Each muscle-heaving movement generated tremendous amounts of heat and sweat, with small rivulets already running off his body. Both women found it difficult to remain on top of Scott, but they worked together and remained locked-on.
A red lamp intermittently flashed above the panel that monitored the tunnel where Scott and his passengers crawled, indicating a strange movement through the doorway. A small grey-coloured figure approached the appropriate panel to investigate the alarming occurrence. Black almond eyes watched for indications as to what might be causing the alarm. A strange shape seemed to be passing through, although very slowly and unusually so.
Very strange
, thought the Grey.
Why should anything pass through this entrance so slowly?
He wondered if there might be a fault with the sensors or perhaps a glitch in the operating system. The Grey leaned gently forward towards the door’s manual override controls, raising an arm with an outstretched finger, aimed at pressing a specific button.
Scott was almost completely through when the lights above and below began to flash repeatedly. He thought there might be some sort of test underway as the doors seemed to suddenly open
to their maximum with a thud. He strongly suspected they might actually snap-shut, to quantify a test by proving they could fully close. He hoped any action would be delayed while they were still passing through. The door’s electronic built-in-test was almost complete as Scott threw one last enormous effort into the remaining few inches. His feet had barely cleared the opening as both doors slammed shut with an almighty clang that rattled their eardrums.
“Holy-shit!” he breathlessly exclaimed almost as loudly as one door skidded off a shoe’s sole, knocking his leg to one side with the momentum
. This caused them all to lose balance with the women sliding off onto the hard dusty floor. Belinda was first to hit the dirt before letting-out a shriek as Phyllis inadvertently landed on one of her hands. Once Belinda’s composure was regained, after pulling herself from underneath Phyllis, she checked her throbbing hand for damage. With a sigh of great relief, she turned to face the doors. Without any kind of warning, they just as loudly slammed open again. Belinda jumped with a frightening scream, alarming Scott and Phyllis in the process.
The Grey was satisfied the test had proved the doors were still fully operational and any fault had
been cleared. However, the stringent rule was that all unusual events were to be logged, so it was, with the added result of the positive test. At the end of the short report, the following was added, ‘
No further action is required unless the fault returns
’.
The three looked at one another, before Belinda asked, “What happens now?”
Scott rubbed his chin, wiping dust away from his five-o’clock shadow, replying, “To be perfectly honest, I would like to propose we all head for the nearest pub for a drink to celebrate me still having both legs … But, in the absence of an appropriate watering-hole, I say we go on. It’s my belief the Greys thought there was a fault with the door and tested it, or an automatic system cut in to exercise its mechanics to clear a suspected fault. Either way, I think we’ve gotten away with it, especially as there isn’t an alarm sounding off and the doors are still open. And there aint a whole army of little Grey buggers coming down on us from all directions.” He nodded his head in self-agreement as he finished his statement, satisfied with his answer and conclusion.
Both women agreed to continue while
also being prepared for any sort of activity that might yet arrive from ahead of them. They knew Scott was an enlightened human when it came to deduction, while not really understanding how he was able to do it so quickly. However, they were pleased he was with them and that
he
was on
their
side.
“Right ladies, let’s jump to it and get going again,” he prompted them as he started his stride.
Phyllis asked Belinda by telepathy.
What does he want us to jump to?
It, whatever
it is,
Belinda replied uncertain to his meaning.
Let us just follow him and see what happens,
she added.
Phyllis nodded, before falling into line and following
their
General.
“Entering Martian orbit,” was automatically relayed throughout the Grey ship. “Prepare for immediate entry and landing,” was replied as the commander headed for the ship’s
control level.
The tunnel was long and warm with its heat and humidity increasing
as they progressed. Sweat continued to run down Scott’s body as he led the way, making his feet feel wet. He knew his female entourage would be feeling similar so continued to lead without asking how they were. Time was against them, he knew, so any delay had to be avoided. Discomfort and fatigue had to be ignored, their purpose for being there had to be paramount. They had to keep moving... regardless.
Belinda’s face was awash with sweat, feeling trickles of perspiration running downwards. Her breasts were wet with erect nipples as they rubbed against the suit’s fabric. Phyllis was no different, both almost enjoying the hot and steamy sensual sensation. As for Scott, he just wanted to get the mission over and done with. His desire to save Frell and Drang was as strong as ever and his thoughts on kicking some Grey ass were getting stronger by the second. He tried hard to ignore the thumping pain from his arm and leg muscles, recalling something similar from his efforts at his RAF station’s gymnasium. He quietly muttered the words that were often recited by one particular Physical Training Instructor, who Scott sometimes swore was sadistic,
No-pain-no-gain
. He just gritted his teeth and kept pushing on.
Together, the three continued to thread their way through the tunnel in silence, each with their own thoughts of what they might find ahead of them. Belinda was aware she would need to console Scott should the captives be found dead, while Scott firmly believed he was going to save them. Phyllis was mentally making ready to use her engineering and piloting capabilities to get them
away from there should things go awry. The trio marched forever onwards in deep thought and expression, unknowingly getting deeper into the Martian crust with each and every forced and sweaty step.
Touchdown occurred silently, with a slight cloud of dust being blown upwards as the ship had carefully descended before entering into its chamber. Atmospheric pressure and oxygen concentration were stabilised just prior to the commander’s appearance in its underbelly doorway. A gangway raised itself, bridging the gap between the chamber's floor and the ship, watched by the ship's commander and a few attending greys.
The humans could be already be here
, he thought,
and if they are, it’s my duty to catch them, rip them apart, and use the pieces to finish the on-going hybrid project
. He strode across the gangway, listening to the thoughts and reports of those awaiting his presence and commands. His black-as-night eyes seemed to glisten that little bit more when the faulty doors and the subsequent positive test were mentioned, his stride shortening while he seemed to be considering the implications and possibilities of an intrusion. He stopped abruptly, giving the apparent detection of something bulky and painstakingly slow crossing the door’s threshold more than a passing moment’s thought. He barked a series of orders, issuing directives and purposes for the group of little Greys who swarmed around him like attending ants. His base had been compromised by the human subjects, he was certain, and their entrance was by way of that supposedly malfunctioning door. The most important thing now, he knew, was to capture them before they might cause damage. He was prepared to go to any length to contain them, killing them where they stood if necessary.
The Captain, the ship’s navigator and the Pentagon’s Chief of Staff, were the only personnel who knew the submarine’s exact position
and present circumstances. No other reports had been forthcoming from that region, even though seafaring traffic was frequent.
Perhaps,
thought the skipper,
the report was due to an over indulgence of duty-free beverages and over-active imaginations mixed with tablets often taken by geriatrics to keep them going
. He considered the cruise ship in question might also have shown a science fiction film on its movie-channel, possibly provoking a mass hysteria sighting by the impressionable oldies. In addition to this variable, any active satellite’s imagery processing equipment was occasionally known to show intermittent false sightings, earning them the common name of, floaters, a name that was readily associated with an age-related eyesight problem. It was also commonly believed that false sightings might be connected with extra solar flare radiation from the sun. So, all in all, the sighting was probably nothing at all, he surmised. Still, the elderly Captain contemplated, there may be something unearthly to find. He reflected, what a way to end his present voyage and career with boring retirement waiting for him after this mission. He returned to his cabin and his journal, wondering what any publisher would make of his career and never missed daily logs.
The heat was becoming unbearable as the intrepid trio approached the next doorway down the tunnel. The doors were tightly closed and once again there was no evidence of any handles, panels or controls.
“Phyllis?” he asked. “Do you still have the power-supply sphere?”
“Yes, I do. Why?”
“I think we’re going to need it again,” he stated while running his hands and fingers around the doors periphery and not locating any other way of gaining entry.
The ship’s commander approached the Base Commander, who sat in his elevated seat that over-looked the Control Room’s personnel, monitors, array of lights, dials and switches. Little hands and fingers tweaked and adjusted illuminated controls, maintaining life support systems and monitoring for any activity around the planet’s outer orbit. He asked if his suspicions that
humans had already entered the base was being acted upon? The Base Commander faced his junior and informed him there was a force of clones being gathered with the prospect of entering the tunnel where the humans were believed to be, with the plan of apprehending them soonest.
The ship’s commander seethed his contempt at his superior, stating he thought the humans should be destroyed when captured, not apprehended. That was a fools decision, he added. The Base Commander hissed back his annoyance while vacating his seat, offering it to his junior while he went hunting the human
s.
He turned to say as he was leaving, “Should any ship of none-Grey origin attempt to gain entry to the planet’s atmosphere and surface, I want to know
!”
The newly seated ship’s commander thought for a moment. “Should they already be here, the orbital search will be a waste of time.” However, looking around him, as he now commanded a substantial number of operators they might as well work at something. He repeated his thoughts of warning, concerning the immediate destruction of the humans upon capture, as the Base Commander left the Control to take charge of the hunt. The outgoing Grey heard his subordinate’s remarks, hissing again at the upstart’s interference. He preferred to do his own thinking and would deal with the upstart’s insolence and insubordination upon his return.
Phyllis uncovered the sphere once again and pointed the open-channels at the closed doors. The flash of brilliant light was combined with an enormous explosion. The doors blew away from the doorframe in sharp fragments instead of molten metal. The whole frame and tunnel fizzled with electric-blue sparks and clouds of choking dust billowing outwards.
“Bloody-hell, Phyllis! What the heck did you do this time?” pleaded Scott as he picked himself up after being blown off his feet and backwards
for some metres by the shockwave.
Phyllis
regained consciousness, lying flat on her back. She held her hands up to view them before screaming in excruciating agony. She’d lost all the fingers and thumb from her right hand and three from her left. What remained of the missing digits were black stumps where once there had been fully functional fingers. Both hands were seared and blackened with smoke curling up and away from the charred flesh.
For a longer moment, Belinda lay quite still, eventually
managing to sit up while shaking her head as if to assist a return of her senses. She wondered what had gone wrong. All she could hear was a loud whistling in both ears. She thought she had heard a scream, but couldn’t be certain as it had sounded so distant.
Scott
urgently ran over to Phyllis to see what was wrong. He noticed her hands straight away, unable to hide the look of horror written across his face.
“Oh my sainted-aunt,” he cried. “What happened, Phyllis? How did this happen?”
Phyllis couldn’t reply as she was in shock. She turned a deathly shade of pale before collapsing backwards.
Scott rushed forward and caught her
weight just before she hit the ground. He laid her down gently while supporting her head as best he could. Her body was limp and her eyelids flickered wildly. A lot of her hair was badly singed and some facial skin scorched to flaming red where it was already beginning to peel away. He realised she had been close to death when he recalled her warning about using the energy-beams.
As Belinda recovered her
deafened senses, she realised what had happened to Phyllis and the missing doors.
“The beams must have short-circuited,” she
stated. “For there to be an explosion like that the energy must have crossed-over, although it couldn’t have been a complete short otherwise there wouldn’t be any Phyllis left to pick-up.”
“I remember she said there could be such an explosion, and the person holding the sphere would be destroyed.” Scott recalled with horror in
a concerned voice.
“And she was right too.
The reason this happened wasn’t a straightforward shorting of the beams but something close to it,” said Belinda looking puzzled.
“So what the hell caused it?” he questioned her with a look of worry.
“I think it was the doors, Scott. They were not made of the same material the first doors were, but something much stronger. I suspect the material was galactic metal, which would certainly account for the way it reacted.”
“You’re gonna have to explain exactly what you mean, Belinda. This galactic, or whatever you called it, metal, created an explosion from the beams? And even though they didn’t touch, there was without any shadow of a doubt an ex-bloody
large-plosion!”
Belinda wondered how she might explain what she thought had happened to a man who didn’t know very much about all the elements
in the cosmos.
“The doors,” she began, “are made of the hardest metal known, a pure element from a very distant universe. It doesn’t melt easily, neither does it bend nor stretch without an appropriate catalyst. What it
does do is reflect energy, which is why it doesn’t yield itself to most kinds of manipulation. I think the doors reflected the beams as they touched its surface, with one just glancing against the other. This would certainly account for the explosion. If the beams had properly shorted, there wouldn’t be a body left to care for, and perhaps neither of us too.”
Scott had listened to her explanation, considering the implications of her theory.
“I guess we’re lucky then,” he said with a sigh.
“There’s no guessing, Scott!”
“M-Hmm,” he murmured in agreement, knowing she was right.
Belinda added after a pause. “The explosion and disintegration of the doors will be known by those who control this area.”
While sticking one finger in an ear, he replied, “I would expect the entire bloody planet to know what happened. My ears are still ringing like Big-Ben gone mad!”
“You will not cure the sound by probing them with a finger,” she added smiling.
“Yeah, and I bloody well know it,” he smiled back.
Scott lifted a limp Phyllis onto his back, hoisting her over one shoulder in a Fireman’s-lift.
She let loose a few incomprehensible words and groans before passing-out again.
“There’s gonna be some shit to pay for this!” he said while shuffling Phyllis’s body over his shoulders to even-out her weight. “Every friggin Grey son-of-a-bitch between here and Timbuk
-bloody-tu will have heard that bang, homing-in to see what the fuck’s going on down here!”
Belinda wondered where the payment part of his repertoire was relevant, and where or what was Timbuk
-bloody-tu?”
“Right then, Belinda, we need to move like the proverbial shit-off-a-shovel if we’re gonna get the hell out of this
bloody mess. Can you operate the sphere as a weapon, should we need it?”
“Yes I can, but I really don’t want to hurt anyone, not even a Grey.”
Although it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, he smiled at her thought provoking reply.
“That’s alright,” he said. “I’m sure I can operate it as a weapon if I need to,” And even though he had said it convincingly, he
wasn’t
sure. “Phyllis showed me how to use it and she’s a good teacher.”
Belinda apologised for allowing her feelings to put them at risk
. With Scott’s reassurance she agreed it should be him doing any nasty deeds anyway. With a smile of relief, she handed the glowing sphere to him, being careful not to dislodge the safety seal. Accepting it and holding it firmly but safely, he took up point position, saying, “It’s time to move.”
They ran down the tunnel, leaving the blasted doorway behind them as they tried to put as much distance between them and the scene of destruction as quickly as possible. He knew the explosion would attract the kind of attention they didn’t need or want; a magnet of curious attraction to any Greys in the vicinity.
Fortunately for Scott, Phyllis was a shapely woman without a single gram of unwanted fat or overweight problems. However, he soon knew he was carrying an extra amount of weight as his legs began to weaken and breathing became strained. He still hadn’t fully recovered from the exercise of crawling through the doorway and wished he had some painkillers readily at hand. Belinda followed silently, aware of the tremendous effort made by Scott to carry their wounded compatriot. His breathing was timed to his heavy footfalls, one after the other, puff after pant, all tuned to the sound of his echoing footsteps. This was yomping big time.
The tunnel dipped downwards, the added steepness aiding their progress. It was a relief to find himself going downhill, although the rise in temperature and humidity was steadily working
against him. His body was soaked in perspiration from the effort of carrying another, but he was resigned to the extra work as essential to save her life.
Their downward trend ceased abruptly as he felt the air density increase. He stopped without warning and was almost knocked over as Belinda ran headfirst into
his back.
“Whoa, Belinda; take it easy for Christ’s-sake. Get your breath back while I go ahead a little further to see what’s there. I think I can see something in the distance, but I’m unsure what it is because it’s difficult to make it out. I’ll just be a moment.”
Belinda tried to see past his bulk but couldn’t as he presented a much larger figure because of Phyllis. For Belinda, the tunnel’s cross-section was as good as blocked by Scott and Phyllis’ combined mass - so looking beyond them was nigh-on impossible.
Scott thought he could see something that resembled a pillar ahead of them, or perhaps another door. He cautiously moved forward, listening and watching for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary.