First Contact (Galactic Axia Adventure) (27 page)

Diane mentally appraised each of their abductors for size, strengths, and limitations. She was certain Tim was calculating as well and they only had to wait for the opportunity to turn their situation around. Neither trooper was really worried about their circumstances. Both had been thoroughly trained in all forms of personal combat and were able to take down multiple assailants alone. Right now they had to bide their time and wait for the most advantageous opening. In the meantime, both Tim and Diane acted like the frightened tourists their abductors thought them to be.

With the door to the building closed, one of the thugs turned on a single, naked light where the two troopers got a good look at their muggers in the dingy glow. They were obviously living on the ragged edge of crime. Something about their demeanor told Tim that none of them had known legitimate work for quite some time. What this said about the social structure of Maranar could never be discovered reading a report.

Their four abductors spaced themselves around the two captives. By the way they moved their hands, it was clear there had never really been any firearms. They started to close in on their victims when Diane said one word—“Now!”

The two troopers sprang into action and let their training take effect. Using their bodies for leverage, it only took a few quick kicks and flying fists to bring down the first two thugs. The other two lunged at the troopers but met a well-aimed elbow strike from Diane and a scissors kick from Tim. By this time one of the first two had staggered back to his feet, only to be dropped again by another head strike from Diane.

The two undercover troopers surveyed the heap of unconscious humanity on the floor before them. “I guess punks are the same everywhere in the galaxy. Slow and stupid,” Tim said.

“You’re slowing down a bit yourself,” Diane said to Tim as she wiped her hands on her pant legs. “A little more time in the gym might sharpen you up.”

“Speak for yourself.” He knew she was picking fun at him, her way of hiding the fear she felt about their close encounter with a very dangerous situation. “What do you think we should do with these bums?”

“Better leave them here. It might get complicated if we become involved in an investigation.”

“Right,” Tim agreed. They surveyed the tangled heap of street scum for any further signs of fight. There was none. Tim circled the men and opened the door of their former prison. “Let’s go before we stir up too much suspicion.” Diane nodded and the two headed out of the dingy building and up the alley to the street.

Once back out in the daylight the two troopers resumed their interrupted stroll. Mingling with other pedestrians and blending in with the crown, they distanced themselves from their former captors. They found a bus stop and after consulting the posted schedules, the couple found they only had to wait a few minutes for a ride. Later, they would transfer to a different bus that would take them close to the main gate of the facility.

∞∞∞

The chairman placed a phone call to the makeshift lab containing the faster-than-light communication equipment. The couple had not been found and he was becoming worried. He was familiar with the town around the complex. The thought of two innocent and helpless strangers wandering around out there was very unsettling.

The telephone rang several times. Just when he was about to give up, someone answered the telephone. “Yes?”

“When?” the chairman asked. It had been decided to keep conversation to a minimum in case the line wasn’t secure.

“As expected,” the voice answered and then the line went dead. With a shaking hand, the chairman hung his receiver back on its hook. Those two words were the ones he did not want to hear.

According to the simple code they’d worked out, it meant the Galactic Axia patroller was returning a full day earlier than originally planned. That left him only another few hours in which to find the missing envoy. Again, visions of the Axia’s reaction to the disappearance of the couple flooded his mind but this time with a more urgent reality. How would these powerful aliens react? Would they turn their terrible might against a planet they probably believed backward and barbaric? Would they leave them defenseless against those horrible Red-tail creatures that attacked the moon mission? How would they survive if the Axia unleashed the firepower they possessed against Maranar? So many questions; so few answers.

Lifting the telephone off its cradle again, the chairman put a call through to the head of security for the complex. He couldn’t see it but the chairman could imagine the bedlam going on down in security.

“Security,” the man answered warily as he nodded at an assistant who was directing the frantic search for their missing visitors.

“We’ve got another problem,” the chairman said shakily.

“What’s up, Chief?” the security director asked suspiciously. The search was consuming most of his resources as it was.
Now the chief is going to tell me there’s an invasion of aliens or something!

“They’re coming back early,” the chairman said. The receiver went dead for a second as his security chief digested the news. “And our visitors are still missing.”

∞∞∞

An hour later the cross town bus dropped the envoy off a block from the gate of the launch complex. Walking in the afternoon sun, Tim and Diane were feeling a little apprehensive about their adventure. Just as they rounded the corner a dozen official-looking cars, some with security emblems on their doors, race out the gate toward town.

Waiting until the rush ended, Tim and Diane approached the guard shack. They both showed their visitor identification badges and the guard waved them through without a second glance. Another group of cars raced out the gate.

“Getting slow, huh?” remarked Tim, thinking back to Diane’s comment after they’d subdued the thugs.

“Just seemed to take you longer than usual to take out your first assailant.”

“We’ll log some extra time in the gym when we get back to the ship if it will make you happy.”

Diane nodded her agreement. “You’re going to need all the strength you can muster if you’re going to marry me.”

“Sassy woman,” Tim said. “I like that.”

Everything inside the building was in an uproar. Guards and other security personnel racing around the complex made it clear that some sort of emergency was in progress. Tim wondered if their moon mission might have crashed or if some national emergency had taken place while they were on their little sightseeing tour. Diane thought she’d only seen this kind of frantic activity a few other times, usually among the crew before an imminent Red-tail attack.

Making their way through the activity, Tim and Diane arrived at the chairman’s office. When they walked in, he had his back to the door and was anxiously yelling at someone on the phone.

“That’s right! They disappeared hours ago and haven’t been seen since!” Tim looked at Diane and raised his eyebrows. She smiled in return.

“I don’t care what it takes!” the chairman continued to scream. Diane reached over and tapped the man on the shoulder. He brushed her hand away and continued to shout orders at the poor soul somewhere in security. Diane tapped him again, this time with a little more insistence. The chairman spun around angrily, ready to lambaste whomever dared interrupt his tirade.

“There’s no telling what may have...” The man’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly a few times while he stared at the couple. He sat down heavily in his chair, the phone hanging loosely in his hand.

“Sir?” a voice sounded from the dangling receiver. “You there, sir?”

“Call off the search,” the chairman said into the receiver. “They’re here.”

“They’re there?” the voice said. “What do you mean they’re there?”

“I mean they just walked into my office.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

“That’s not what I was going to say, sir. How do we explain the alert and all of the activity this afternoon?”

“Call it a drill or whatever you want to. Doesn’t matter to me,” he added as he shakily hung up the receiver.

“We’re back,” Tim said lamely. They stood idly in front of the chairman’s desk ask if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It was apparent their disappearance had caused considerable consternation.

“Hope we didn’t cause any inconvenience.”

The chairman absently shook his head. “I don’t even want to talk about it,” he said to the couple. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“We had a good day,” Diane said coyly. “We saw the sights, had a nice lunch, ran into some thugs, got mugged. You know, just a normal day on the streets of Maranar.”

“Thugs? Mugged?”

 “We left them in one of the old warehouses off the main thoroughfare,” Tim offered. The chairman held up his hand to stop them from saying more.

“I don’t want to know. I only want to get you safely to the island. We received word that your ship coming back tonight.”

Tim and Diane looked questioningly at each other. There was no way these people’s primitive aircraft could return them to the island tonight, not if the patroller was on its way. The initial flight had taken over a day. How did the chairman expect to deliver them to the island tonight? There was just no way.

“I’ll have my staff pack up all of the reports so we can get going.”

“If you could have someone pick up several different newspapers for the collection, we’ll call it good,” Tim suggested.

“Fine,” the chairman said as he reached for his telephone again. “Whatever you want is fine. I just want this to be over!”

An hour later the couple boarded an aircraft with the chairman. When the craft took off for the island, Tim and Diane looked out over the countryside surrounding the main airfield. They’d already outlined their report to the commander. Diane watched the chairman and wondered what he would think of their conclusions. He had no way of knowing the Axia had citizens living on Maranar that submitted regular reports to the watcher service. She wondered if the Axia would leave them in place once they filed their report but he knew what their recommendation would be. They’d discussed it before leaving his office where he confided in them that Maranar wasn’t ready for the Axia.

∞∞∞

Maranar shrank from sight as the patroller raced for space. Tim and Diane watched through a view port while the globe turned into a pinpoint of light against the blackness of space. When it became lost in the glare of Maranar’s sun, they turned to face Commander Tess seated nearby.

“So? What’s your gut feeling before I have to wade through your reports?” Commander Tess asked the couple.

“The same as the chairman told us in his office,” Diane answered. “Maranar isn’t ready to be opened.”

“He came to that conclusion too?” the commander asked thoughtfully.

“Yes ma’am,” Tim said. “He said the impact would be devastating on their fragile culture and that exposure to our technology would throw them into a tailspin, especially since they’re still in the infancy of their space program.”

“And what did you two feel personally?” Tess asked. Tim and Diane looked at each other questioningly.

“We felt it might work to open the planet,” Tim said. “But we can’t do it fairly if they don’t believe they’re ready.”

“We brought back every report they gave us, along with a selection of their newspapers,” Diane added. “It was the papers that helped us understand why it has to be postponed.”

“How’s that?” Commander Tess asked.

“Well, as you know, good news in a paper is a rarity,” Diane said. “The old maxim—no news is good news is true wherever you go. Since its bad news and tragedy that sells papers, what better source for information about what they think about themselves?”

“And you thought they could still handle opening after reading their newspapers?” the commander asked.

“Yes ma’am,” Tim answered. “Even though there’s a lot of bad news, there’s still a strong thread of personal resilience in their culture. These are a people that can bounce back from just about anything. It’s only their chairman’s recommendation against opening that tipped the scales in favor of keeping the planet closed.”

“Dr. Garret felt the same way as the chairman,” Tess said.

“They have a lot of problems down there but nothing they won’t overcome in time. I think we need to at least keep covert contact with them until they’re ready to open up.”

“Your findings coincide with the watcher personnel we have stationed on the surface. I think you met one of them on your little excursion into town.”

The mothership loomed large in the window of the patroller. It had only been a few days since they’d left their home in space but it felt like a month. With wedding bells only a few days away, Tim and Diane had more on their minds than just the admission of a backward planet into Galactic Axia.

Chapter Nineteen

The small office was quiet. Evening had finally come and the main building of the launch complex was virtually deserted. The two men sat and contemplated each other. Ever since the chairman and Dr. Garret had returned from the island, they’d both been lost in thought. Now, after everyone, the staff, the other scientists and their visitors from outer space were gone, they finally had a chance to speak freely about what was on both of their minds.

“What was your impression of their ship and so on?” the chairman asked, breaking the long silence.

“Overwhelming,” Garret said quietly. “And way too much of a temptation for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it would be impossible to resist the temptation of their culture and technology,” Garret answered. “They have a strong, stable, and free society in which we could easily lose ourselves. We would tend to sit back and let them solve the problems we need to solve for ourselves first.”

“What did they tell you up there?”

“It wasn’t so much what they told me as what they showed me,” the scientist answered. “They showed me the entire historical file on Maranar from back when it was an independent planet in Galactic Axia.”

“You mean Maranar actually belonged to this Galactic Axia at one time?” the chairman asked incredulously. “I thought this was the first contact between our two civilizations.”