Fugitive From Asteron (29 page)

“While you were waiting for the sunbeam
to be reassembled, you went back and forth to Earth, pretending to be Charles
Merrett, no doubt intensifying your acting lessons for a bigger role than you
had anticipated. For the past two months, you had to play Charles Merrett until
the sunbeam was fully reassembled on Asteron. You might have needed help from
the project team, or parts from MAS. Above all, you had to pretend you were
Charles Merrett, because if Earth officials knew that he and his invention had vanished,
you could have faced a full-scale invasion of Asteron to hunt for them. You had
to live at Charles Merrett’s home, deal with his daughter, conduct his
business, and make his appointments so no one would suspect anything had
happened to him.

“Now, you did not originally intend
to continue your masquerade longer than it took to reach the secured area and
pick up the sunbeam intact, so there has been seepage through your seams, signs
that you are not really Charles Merrett, if Kristin cares to examine your
behavior closely.”

Kristin looked at him sharply.

“Kristin says she has seen little
of you since Project Z’s cancellation. Could that be because you did not want
her to take closer notice of your appearance, your expressions, or your memory
of family situations that only Charles Merrett would know? Has Kristin tested
you?”

Kristin cocked her head in
curiosity, studying the figure that had found what he was looking for in the
closet, a scarf.

“Haven’t you exploited my daughter
enough?”

“Of course, you never got any new
projects for MAS, because that was not your intention. And your business
failure and unusual
grouchy
state, as Kristin called it, was blamed on
Project Z, not on your being a different person, a completely opposite person,
as black is opposite to white. Your odd behavior was not blamed on your being
Feran
!
And of course most recently you have had more reasons to be grouchy, because I
stole your spacecraft with the reassembled sunbeam inside just as you were
ready to embark on your mission of destruction.”

Feran walked toward me, unfolding
the scarf.

“No!” Kristin blocked his path.
“You can’t gag him.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

“You don’t understand, Daddy. It
makes him feel helpless. Something terrible once happened to him—”

“Oh, did it, now? Isn’t that too
bad?”

I knew my time was up as Feran spread
the cloth out in his hands and bent down to me. Kristin fell to her knees by my
side, struggling to stop him, so I had a final moment. “Kristin, you must find
a way to stop his scheme. If he activates the sunbeam, we are all doom—”

Fresh blood dripped down my throat
as the gag cut into the gashes his punches had made on my mouth.

“Now Kris, dear, we need to keep
him quiet until we can give him to ES. You trust them, don’t you? They’ll treat
him fairly.”

The gag was in place.

Then his phone rang. “Yes? . . . You
did? Good! I’ll be there in a minute.” He placed his hands on Kristin’s arms,
lifting her up with him. “Earth Security found his spacecraft hidden in the
empty lot across the road. That’s where we think we’ll find the weapon he stole
from me. He’s right, you know. Project Z
is
a weapon, a very dangerous
one that we can’t let fall into the hands of his government. Now come with me,
honey. I don’t want to worry about you being here with him. I can’t take any
chances with your safety, you know. When I lost your mother, it was . . . devastating.”

With superb acting, Feran lowered
his head and seemed to let fall a little tear.

“I didn’t mean to be rough with
him, Kris. I know what you must be going through, but every time I think of the
way we found your mother—”

He threw his arms around Kristin.
She permitted the hug but did not return it. I lay on the floor, my hands and
legs bound, my mouth finally silenced, my body propped up on one elbow. I
stared at Kristin’s distressed face as I wondered about her thoughts.

“Come with me, please, Kris,” said
Daddy.

Kristin’s eyes lingered on mine. Just
as in a time that seemed long ago, I was gagged and a most beautiful female was
staring at me in bewilderment and fear. I wanted to reach out to her, but I
could not. I wanted to cry out to her, but I could not. I thought of the only
thing I could do. This time I knew it was a most inappropriate gesture for a
desperate occasion. But was it not the acknowledgment of a secret shared by
two? A salute of some kind? An expression of . . . closeness?
I blinked at Kristin with one eye.

Her eyes swept over my body in a
soft caress. Then slowly, painfully, she closed them.

“Come on, baby, let’s go.” Feran
gently took her hand.

With obvious effort, she opened her
eyes and turned to the door, and then she walked toward it. She paused to look
back at me once more. With Feran holding the door for her in a display of good
manners, she left the room to accompany him in retrieving the invention that
would end the human epoch on Earth.

Before joining her in the hallway,
Feran paused a moment. Out of her view, he gripped the drooling mouth of
Coquet, her lights blinking. He fondled the tiny band of buttons he knew
intimately, until he found the one he wanted. A mocking metal tongue jutted out
at me.

There was a sudden flash of light,
a whoosh of air, and a burning sting to my forehead. I convulsed in agony in a
liquid room that whirled around me.

Then there was only darkness.

Chapter 24

A cool draft hit my face and brought me back to
consciousness. As I lay curled on the floor, I felt blood dripping from my forehead.
I was in the room for attitude adjustment, I thought. There was something
important I must do. I tried to recall. . . . It was night,
and I was never going to see another sunrise. . . . Slowly
I opened my eyes to a blur of trees and blue sky from a window. I was confused.
Was it night or day? . . . Was I to end my life or to begin
it?

Then I saw the carpet, the desk, and
the whole setting of my new world as I felt the restraints of my old one
cutting into my limbs and mouth. I realized I was in Dr. Merrett’s office. No, in
the office of Feran the executive.

As the fog from my blackout lifted,
I felt a new sting, more horrible than a bite from Coquet. Feran would find the
spacecraft and get the sunbeam! He would put on the flexite suit and release
the deadly ray. A clock on the desk read: 6:05 P.M. I judged that I had been unconscious
for about ten minutes, time enough for Feran to reach the ship. In a moment,
the will I was struggling to summon would be lost forever.

But no, I realized, as more
thoughts returned. I had borrowed Kristin’s plane the previous night in order
to move the sunbeam. Feran’s spies were getting too close, so I had removed the
cargo from my ship. We were safe. Or were we? Feran would know by now that his
cargo was not in the spacecraft. He would be back any moment to torture me for
the sunbeam! He would do something unbearable; he would use Krist— I had to
hurry!

I inched my way to the desk and
raised myself to my knees. With my head, I spilled a small dish of paper clips
onto the floor. With my hands behind my back, I picked up one and began molding
it into a shape that would unlock the handcuffs. Although out of practice, I
was quite familiar with this task from my previous life.

Suddenly I heard engines overhead.
I continued with my tedious task and finally bent the paper clip into the
desired shape. I placed it in the key slot, gently . . . gently.
I heard the tiny squeak that disengaged the lock. I was free! Within seconds I had
untied myself and removed my gag. I sprang to my feet, jolted with a sudden
surge of energy.

I sped to the front door and peered
out. Near the garden, two planes were descending vertically and about to land.
I could see the faces of the pilots—Feran’s spies. Kristin’s shiny red plane
was just steps away from me. Fresh, cool air washed through my lungs as I
opened the door and sped toward Kristin’s cockpit. Moments later the spies were
on the ground and running toward me, weapons in hand. Then I watched them dive
into a thorny rose bush as I swept Kristin’s plane over them, barely missing their
heads.

I took the plane above a few
scattered clouds into the late-afternoon sky, forming a plan. I loaded the
files of Project Z onto the plane’s computer so that I could search through
them for information that would help me to safely dismantle the zametron.

My plan was to get the sunbeam from
its hiding place before Feran got me, then take it to a remote spot in the
mountains and remove its Zamean-matter fuel. Next, I would reassemble the
machine with dirt inside in place of the fuel. Distraught over the thought of
his torturing Kristin, which he would certainly threaten to do, I would contact
Feran to make a deal. In exchange for the sunbeam, I would demand Kristin. I
would also ask for the spacecraft because he knew I would not stay to be
irradiated. I would let Feran think I was giving up Earth to him. Once Kristin
and the Zamean matter were out of his grasp, she and I could get help. That was
my plan. But first I had to lose the two speeding planes behind me.

I headed away from the coast toward
an area of uninhabited mountains where I had flown with Kristin. Would the
spies hit me? Surely they could not risk killing me until they had the cargo,
but they could try to force me down and bring me to Feran.

I came dangerously close to a wall
of red-brown rock and climbed vertically along it. After flying over the top of
the wall, I suddenly flipped the plane over to reverse my course. Hanging
inverted from my harness, I saw the spies climbing over the rocks just as I was
diving back down the same rocks in the opposite direction. I disappeared into a
deep, narrow canyon. The winds whipped through the canyon at high velocity, as
sometimes occurs in that kind of terrain, creating turbulence. They shook my
plane incessantly, swaying it toward the jagged stone walls, but I struggled to
avoid the menacing ledges that jutted out close to my wing tips. After
traveling some miles from where I had last seen the spies, I could no longer
locate them. Certain that I had lost them, I climbed away from the V-shaped
stone gorge to get out of the maze of mountains.

But just then the curved beaks of
two metal vultures appeared overhead. How could Feran’s spies have known
exactly where to find for me? I descended back into the winding canyon, with
the spies’ planes on my tail.

The rocks flowed by in a liquid
smear as I cut through the narrow rift. The winds ripped by incessantly,
shaking the craft, changing my altitude in sudden spurts, vibrating the wings.
I constantly tried to steady the plane, with the spies still in pursuit. I flew
higher and then lower but found turbulence at every altitude. I meandered along
the snakelike canyon until it narrowed too much for me to chance going any
farther at low altitude in the high winds. I pulled back hard for a steep
climb, just missing a protruding sandstone spire. When I looked back, only one
hooked nose was behind me. The other had burst into a fireball of molten metal
on the spire I had just missed.

I thought I was headed out, but
found myself amid more high peaks. I dived under an arch of rocks spanning from
cliff to cliff above my plane, all the time fighting nausea. I had to get out
of the mountains and into the open sky, but I was losing my way. I was turning
left, directly toward the rocks. I had to lower my right wing to correct. But
no! My instruments told me my wings were level and I was not turning. I had to
resist the urge to correct the wings, because I could no longer trust my
senses. The turbulence was upsetting my equilibrium. I was in an exceedingly
dangerous place to be afflicted with the condition I was now
experiencing—vertigo.

I had to force my eyes to lock on
the instruments that presented a true picture while I disregarded the illusions
of my mind. I had to resist my distorted perceptions and concentrate. Just then
a wall of rock appeared directly in front of me. I had to climb above it, but I
was diving instead. I had to adjust quickly. No, the instruments said I was not
diving; I was climbing. I had better not adjust or I would stall! I was
hesitating too much, and the mountain was coming at me. Suddenly, I rolled
sideways through a sliver of blue space between the jagged peaks I did not
quite manage to climb over. Then I turned to see a blinding explosion that was
the second of the spies’ planes splattered on one of the peaks behind me.

After traveling out of the
turbulence, I continued to battle dizziness for a while. I set the craft’s
instruments to automatically fly me to my destination, and then I tried to
regain my orientation.

I felt better by the time I reached
my target. Detecting no one following me, I descended softly into the quiet crescent
that was the baseball stadium. I landed in foul territory in front of the
dugout between home plate and first base. Because the stadium was empty during
the off-season, I thought it would make a good place to conceal the sunbeam. As
Kristin had surmised, there were no security guards or systems monitoring the
open field. I had confirmed that the previous night when I had come down here
with her plane to deposit the cargo in a new place. I figured that Feran would
think a giant, open arena too preposterous a hiding spot ever to consider.

I left the engine of Kristin’s
plane running while I jumped out. Wobbly, I fought the lingering spatial
disorientation as I walked into the stands near the dugout. There I found
lodged under the seats, where I had left it, the gray box that was Feran’s
cargo. Carefully I slid it out, its cool metal solidly in my grip.

The sunbeam was mine! Feran would
never get it now. Presently it would be nothing more than a harmless metal box
full of dirt, and the Zamean fuel would be a mere clump of matter without a
mechanism to generate its deadly rays. There would be no fireworks tonight. The
peaceful arena of Earth would remain undisturbed for the enduring season of the
human epoch. There would be no noxious beam released but only a deadly demon
captured. I lifted the sunbeam into my arms gingerly, as if it were a baby. I
turned to head back to my craft. Then I stopped.

On the field in front of my plane I
saw three mouths gaping at me: one in innocence, one in malice, and one in drooling
excitement of impending violence. I saw Kristin, Feran, and Coquet.

“I’ll take that, please,” said
Feran pleasantly.