Fugitive From Asteron (28 page)

Chapter 23

Before he could recover from the shock of seeing me, I
leaped over the desk, bent his neck back, and towered over him, a triumphant
grin on my face. My reflexes were quick, and I had the advantage. I grabbed a
crystal vase of flowers, no doubt placed on the desk by his loving daughter. I
raised it high in the air, tumbling the flowers and splashing cold water into
our faces. With a fierce new strength, I aimed the vase directly at his head. I
curled my other hand like a claw around his throat. My mind was wild with
visions of golden hair swaying on a scaffold and a strangled body under a sheet
by a fireplace. I would now have
my own
theater of justice, and every
muscle in my body burned for it!

But Kristin’s reflexes were also
quick. She threw herself over the stunned figure sprawled on the chair, covered
his head with her own, and shrieked at me: “No! No! Alex, don’t!”

I managed to stop the falling vase
a mere inch above Kristin’s head, and I dropped it on the desk. I grabbed
Kristin roughly and sent her crashing against a bookcase, causing a shelf’s
worth of volumes to flap to the floor. I grabbed the vase and raised it again
over Feran’s head, but it was too late. He had already opened a desk drawer,
and I was looking straight into the obscene mouth of his prized weapon, Coquet.

That mouth was a toothless cylinder
of bluish metal, pursed at the end like lips stretched into a perpetual snarl. Coquet’s
tongue was a long strip of steel that jutted out viciously at the press of a
button, spitting rays and beams of torture. Glowing buttons sparkled like
jewels about Coquet’s neck. Feran’s hand caressed her throat lovingly while her
circuitry purred and hummed, waiting impatiently for her prey.

I dropped my arm slowly, letting the
vase fall to the carpet. I eased my grip on Feran’s throat. I backed away from
malicious eyes that were unmistakably Feran’s, as I heard a soft voice with an
Earthling accent that sounded nothing like the accent I knew, “Don’t try
anything.”

While he pointed Coquet at me, he stood
up, pressed a button on his pocket phone, and then spoke to someone who was no
doubt one of his spies: “I’d like to inform you that our visitor from Asteron
is my
daughter’s boyfriend
.”

“Asteron!” Kristin screamed.

“Imbeciles!” barked Feran into the
phone, with a telltale crack in the smooth voice, like a fissure in the ground
just before a quake. “Kristin, dear,” he said, his voice steadying, “you told
me that your boyfriend is a fellow named Alex who just appeared one morning on
our lawn, and that you got him a job at MAS. But you neglected to tell me he
was an
alien
.”

Kristin stared from me to him. “But . . . but
Daddy. You were too busy. You didn’t give me a chance.”

“I guess I have been busy lately,
dear,” he said apologetically. Then he returned to his phone call. “I think his
spacecraft landed by my house. Search the vacant lot across the road, and call
me back as soon as you locate the ship. I want to enter it
myself
.”
Then his voice cracked again: “There’s been enough bungling of this matter!”

As Kristin’s eyes widened in
confusion, mine narrowed in clarity. The moment I had seen Feran behind the
desk, I had known the answers to the remaining questions that puzzled me.

“Alex . . . ?
Daddy . . . ? What’s this all about?” Kristin asked incredulously.

While aiming Coquet at my head,
Feran reached into the desk drawer for another object familiar to me.

“You call him
Daddy
?” I
shouted. “This is
Feran
, the supreme ruler of Asteron, the planet of
corpses. Did your daddy ever have a weapon like that, Kristin? Did he ever keep
handcuffs in his desk? These things come from Asteron. I know them well,
because I have encountered them many times.”

“What? Alex, are you really from . . . 
Asteron
?”

“I am from the place where evil
disguises itself as good, ugliness as beauty, and a demon as your father.” I
turned to the loathsome eyes that never left me. “You dare not kill me until
you get the cargo, so I can speak the truth. You stole from Charles Merrett the
zametron built for Earth’s military as the ultimate weapon of all time, the
weapon made to unleash the Zamean beam that injured Steve Caldwell’s brain, the
weapon Charles Merrett called the sunbeam and made under Project Z, but he
decided he could not deliver it because he had found no antidote.”

I could see Kristin’s confused gaze
moving back and forth between Feran and me. I had to get as much of the story
out as possible, so she would know the truth and somehow foil his scheme.

Feran held out the cuffs. “Put
these on him, Kristin.”

“But . . . but
Daddy, what’s this all about? That can’t be necessary. That . . . hideous . . . weapon
can’t be necessary!”

“He tried to
kill
me. You
saw that yourself. He’s the spy from Asteron, the man Earth Security is looking
for. Oh, he changed his appearance, all right, but he didn’t fool me. I
recognized him from a picture ES showed me. Now we have to hold him until they
get here. Okay, honey?”

Kristin did not reply.

“Look, this guy came to Earth. He
took advantage of you to get a job at MAS. And he stole a weapon from me, a
dangerous weapon I
must
retrieve!”

“Why would he come here today
looking for you if he stole something from you and knew you’d report him to the
authorities?”

“He wanted to . . . gain
my confidence so he could steal more secrets.” Feran hesitated, groping for a
story to satisfy Kristin. “But when he . . . saw that I
recognized him . . . he knew he had to kill me. I’m sorry,
honey. I know you were taken in by him. I know he toyed with your feelings and hurt
you. But he’s working for the people who killed your mother! Now put these on
him!” He rattled the cuffs impatiently.

Kristin seemed to be searching our
faces for an answer, standing motionless as if unable to move toward her father
or toward me.

“Oh, Kris! You don’t see it, yet, do
you?” Feran shook his head, sprinkling a little affection into his impatience,
no doubt following a recipe he had learned. Then he told me to put my hands
behind me. Pressing Coquet into my back with one hand, he used the other to snap
the cuffs shut on my wrists.

While this task engaged him, I
continued. “Now I understand why you had those bandages on your face in
Asteron. That was over two Earthling years ago. We thought you had an accident
that injured you, but when the bandages were removed, you had a new face. Your
old face, with its grotesque nose, drooling lips, and feeble eyes, which we
called beautiful, was replaced by the proportional features we called ugly.
Then we thought you did not have an accident after all but intentionally
changed your face to look more like the aliens you courted, so you could get more
aid to feed us. But now I know the real reason for your transformation. After
you discovered that Charles Merrett was making a weapon with the Zamean beam, you
were making yourself into Charles Merrett. No doubt you two have a similar
height and build, so that was your starting point. The rest, you manufactured. Kristin
says Earth’s cosmetic surgery is incredibly advanced. Well, Asteron’s surgeons
surely came to Earth secretly and were trained here, because there is no modern
medicine there, and they replaced your vile face with Charles Merrett’s good
one. Unfortunately they could not replace your soul too.” A sudden spurt of
blood trickled into my eyes as he tapped my temple with Coquet.

“Daddy!” Kristin screamed in
horror. But she remained frozen in place.

With my hands now locked in the
cuffs and Coquet still aimed at me, Feran walked to a closet, looking for
something on the shelf.

“You changed your face to match
Charles Merrett’s so you could get through the security system to Project Z.” I
remembered the words of Mike, the guard. “When modern advances make possible
better security, they also make possible new ways to breach it. The remarkable
surgery on your face may be Asteron’s only contribution to the history of
medicine, the perverse distinction of aiding your identity theft to destroy a
free world.”

“Preposterous!” barked Feran. He
shot a nervous look to Kristin, wondering what she was thinking.

“Now I see why you had Dustin plant
a camera to read Dr. Merrett’s monitor. I thought you could not access Project
Z’s computer files directly, and that may be, but it was not the only reason.
You were studying more than files with your camera. You were studying Charles
Merrett—the way he moves, the tone of his voice, the clothes he wears, the hairstyle
he sports, the people he talks to, the way he runs his business.” I glanced at
Kristin but could read nothing from her face. “The way he talks to his daughter.”

Feran took a rope from the closet
and approached me, swinging it gently in his hand, his vicious eyes belying the
tame gesture, warning me of other moves he might make.

“Kristin, did your father really
keep an alien weapon, handcuffs, and a rope in his office?”

“Daddy, where did you get these
things?”

“Quiet, dear. He’s a wanted man, a
suspected spy!”

“You’re not gonna tie him up, are
you? Please, Daddy, no!”

My words spewed out, because I knew
I did not have much time. “Feran has to play his part until he gets the
sunbeam, Kristin. Then we will all be destroyed. You will not hear any ‘dears’
from him then. What you will see is a brutality—” Feran’s punch cut me short
and knocked me to the floor.

“Daddy, stop it!” Kristin moved
toward me, her arms outstretched.

“Stay away from him, Kris.” Feran
blocked her from reaching me. “Tell
him
to stop it. You hear him
taunting me with his lies. You saw him try to kill me. You heard him say he’s
from Asteron. What more do you want?”

She dropped her arms at his words.
But I was determined to reach her with the truth, because she had to find a way
to stop him. Feran stooped down, tucked Coquet into his belt, and tied the rope
around my legs. He was being exceedingly careful because he realized that all I
needed was one chance.

“Almost three Earthling years ago,
you learned of the laboratory accident through your spy at MAS. There were no
news stories about it, but the people at MAS knew. They found Steve Caldwell
and talked among themselves. That was how you found out. Because MAS makes
weapons and inventions, it is an Earthling company you would spy on to find out
about just such an event as Steve’s discovery. Then the following month one of
your men broke into this home, stole the report on Steve’s accident, and murdered
Charles Merrett’s wife. You must have retrieved enough information to know that
the Zamean beam that injured Steve’s mind had tremendous potential for evil in
the hands of someone like you. But you did not retrieve enough data from the
stolen report to produce the beam yourself. Besides, the source of the material
to make the beam was being monitored on Planet Zamea, so you could not get at
it. You knew about that because you read Charles Merrett’s papers on his computer
screen through the camera you had planted with his cleaning robot. And you knew
from those papers that Earth’s intelligence was surveying Asteron, so you had
to watch your moves. You further knew that Asteron was suspected in the robbery
and murder that took place in this house, and that with just one more provocation,
Earth would invade. So you were helpless to make your own sunbeam.”

“Shut up!” He muttered, as he
squeezed the rope tightly around my ankles.

I propped myself up on one elbow
and looked at him as I spoke. “Then your hidden camera informed you that Dr.
Merrett was launching Project Z to make the very weapon you lusted for but
could not produce. All you had to do was wait until he finished, then steal it.
But to steal it, you had to have Charles Merrett’s face to get into the Project
Z area. You had to subdue your bristly stalks of hair and your savage
expression to cultivate a more civilized appearance. You had to have lessons on
how to speak and act like Charles Merrett. But a little surgery, grooming, and
studying were surely worth the prize of total conquest of the Earth. Besides,
why not adopt such a plan, because it enabled you to exchange your ugly face
for a handsome one?”

He lost control and punched me
again, and blood trickled from the corner of my mouth.

“Stop it!” Kristin screamed at him.
She bent down to me and wiped the blood with a handkerchief.

“Get away from him, honey,” Feran
said in his calmest Daddy voice. He lifted her up gently and placed Coquet in
his pocket now that my arms and legs were restrained. “I know he played with
your feelings and deceived you, and I’m sorry. But he’s a wanted man. He’s
dangerous. Nobody’s gonna harm him. I just need to hold him here for ES.”

Kristin stepped away from me again.
As I wondered what she was thinking, Feran searched the closet for another
item.

“You cannot kill me until you are
sure you have the sunbeam intact. You still have to be civilized, at least for
now, in your role as Charles Merrett, because you first have to find the
device, and then you might need to call an engineer for a repair or get a
replacement part if I damaged your cargo. That allows me to finish my story.”

Feran bristled, but Kristin
listened intently.

“You did not know that Dr. Merrett
was going to dismantle the weapon. No one knew that. You were at MAS the Sunday
he canceled the project, but you were here to
pick up
the sunbeam
intact. By reading the documents from Dustin’s camera, you knew that the weapon
was finished and ready for delivery. You were going to deploy it outside the
flexite area and thereby end the greatest chapter in the story of human life.
You chose Sunday, when MAS is at its emptiest, when it is almost a . . . a . . .”—I
searched for Frank Brennan’s words—“a ghost town, so you could take the sunbeam
when no one was around to question you. How inconvenient that Dr. Merrett had disassembled
the weapon just before you arrived. You had to return to Asteron with the parts
for your engineers to reassemble. That is how the sunbeam ended up on Asteron.
This time your people had the complete instructions and diagrams, recorded by
Dustin’s camera, plus all the sunbeam’s parts, so even
they
could not
fail.