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  “Michael!” the King said extending his hand and shaking Mike’s hand warmly. “And Jo. We were so glad when little Mary came along,” he said warmly kissing her on the cheek, then tickling Mary on the chin.

  “We decided to both come,” said the President, also shaking Mike’s hand. “Your friend here said we needed to talk about how we may help,” he said seriously.

  Jo passed Mary to Shala who took her upstairs to rest. “Mike found out that the same Colonel Brana that captured us has taken Timothy,” she offered.

  “We know,” the King said. “Both of us are ready to expend every effort to get him back,” he said.

  “Rokka said you were worried about using your machine to go down there. I currently have the fastest warship in any navy ready to go down there and sail upriver to help out,” the President said.

  “And I have some Marines that would love to go down there and get Timothy out for you, Mike,” the King said.

  Mike couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He knew they were friends, but they were ready to commit their respective nations to help. He was deeply touched.

  “I appreciate it Your Majesty, Mister President. But that would take time, and time is the one thing we don’t have,” Mike said.

  “We thought you would say that,” the ambassador said. “So we all want to urge you to find a way to fly yourself and anyone you need down there to get your plans off the ground,” he said.

  “It will mean...” Mike started.

  “I know exactly what it will mean,” the ambassador cut him off. “Some people might say I am a fool to do this, but one of the things I have learned in my life has been to do the right thing. Not the politically correct thing, but the right thing. I believe these gentlemen would agree with me.” All of them nodded their heads. “So in this case, I believe we can stretch the boundaries of our noninterference policy a bit. Don’t break it, but stretch it to fit your ideas.”

  “So on behalf of all of our people,” the King said nodding to a grinning President, “We want you to make your plans and get your son back. If we can help, good. If not, so be it. It is, as he says, the right thing,” he said warmly.

  “So call your Captain Dickson and get going. We won’t rest until Timothy is safely back with us,” the President said.

  Thirty minutes later, the King and the President reentered their limousine and the motorcade pulled off. Inside the car, the king was not happy.

  “Brana is a real problem San. Even if Mike does get Timothy back, we have to deal with him,” he said.

  The President nodded. “I agree. And this is a mess that we need to clean up, not the Alliance.”

  The King looked at him. They exchanged understanding looks. “How many of those new turbine driven ships do you have San?”

  “Ten so far, and with a few changes, we could carry about 2,000 of your Marines. I would use my army units if they couldn’t come,” he said.

  “Does this include the big secret one?” the King asked.

  “Of course,” the President nodded with a grin.

  The King nodded. “How soon?”

  “Tie down some trailers on their decks with equipment and additional berthing and they could get underway this evening,” he said.

  “Five days, you think?”

  “Four if I order it. They can refuel at your base in Tanga.”

  The king nodded. A good plan had been hatched. They could get there and stay low until needed. Then move in and take out the garbage, he thought.

  “I’ll send my men across the border in four hours,” he said. Then he broke into a grin. “Good thing I already gave the deployment orders,” he said sitting back in his seat.

  Chapter 9

  Made to Order

  After a few hours rest, Mike was feeling a little better for the wear. The call from his father-in-law had been a welcome one and he and Jo had streamed up to the ship. While Jo was visiting friends, Mike met Mr. Ramey outside simulator four.

  “Have you made up your mind on the flying thing?” Ramey asked.

  Mike smiled and nodded. “I guess so. We’ll go along with your idea for the time being. Now what is so important to bring me back this afternoon?” Mike asked.

  Jim Ramey smiled at the man. “Well, some of us can take time for decisions, but not us older guys. I think I have just the plane you need to operate out of for a while,” he said as he ushered Mike into the simulator. As the doors opened, Mike found himself in an outdoor setting on a bright day walking down a concrete pier. There were men scurrying around doing a number of jobs around a large matte blue aircraft floating at the end of the pier. The bottom half of the aircraft was a lighter color, almost white. The men were working all around it. One of them stopped what he was doing and came over to them. He was wearing a light brown uniform and had what looked like silver railroad tracks on his collar.

  “Hello, Mister Ramey,” the young man said extending his hand. “Ready for some check flights?”

  “This is Lieutenant White. Lieutenant, this is Mike Wilkes, the guy that’s going to be flying the mission,” Ramey said.

  “Pleasure,” the man said. “I understand you have a few hours flying in various types,” he said. “This old girl is really forgiving and except for takeoffs, landings, and about thirteen hours in the air at a time, she’s fun to fly,” he said with a grin.

  “I’ve never seen a plane like her before. What is she?” Mike asked.

  The young man turned and began escorting them down the pier. “This is a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina,” he said. “Twin engine patrol plane, sometimes bomber, sometimes torpedo plane. She has two 1,200 horsepower Pratt and Whitney radials up top and can cruise at about 120 knots all day long. She’s also got a .30 cal up forward and two 50s in the back, and one more in the tail hatch. She’s designed to fly through anything and bring us back alive, as long as they don’t decide to shoot us up too badly,” he said as they reached the aircraft.

  Mike looked the ship over. The skin was metal and covered with rivets. On both wing tips there were floats hanging down which looked as though they could be retracted to be even with the wingtip when flying. On both sides of the fuselage were large clear blisters where the .50 caliber machine guns were mounted. The plane looked solid as a rock. Walking forward, he looked up at the wing on the center column. Long and straight, it was interrupted only by two huge circular engine mounts holding powerful looking internal combustion radial engines. In front of them were three bladed propellers, painted black with yellow tips. As White continued his tour and description of the plane, pulling the red covers from certain places and going through his preflight checklist, Mike made mental notes of her qualities, fuel capacity, long range, handling abilities and many others. Finally back at the “blisters” again, Mike followed the young man as he climbed through one and into the ship. Inside was as rugged as the outside with the support frames, longitudinals and bulkheads that gave the aircraft its sturdiness. There were bunks attached to the bulkheads of the plane that could be pulled down for sleeping. There was a small galley, a toilet, radio compartment, engineer’s station in the support column and finally the cockpit. Mike smiled inwardly. All of the instruments were familiar to him and easy to read. This would not be as difficult as he had imagined.

  After sitting in the right seat, White walked him through all the instruments, switches and controls. Finally, taking his seat on the left, White called out to his crew.

  “Chief, my checklist is complete. Are we ready?

  The Chief stuck his head between Mike and the pilot. “Ready in all respects sir. Let me get in the engineer’s seat and we can start her up,” he said. Then he ducked back into the plane and climbed up to his position. In the back, younger men in blue overhauls took their stations and got ready to cast off the lines.

  White opened the small window beside his seat. “Standby One,” he said. Then he yelled “Clear!” out the window. “Starting one,” he said and flipped the switch on the console. With a w
hining noise, the big propellers on the Pratt and Whitney radial began to turn slowly. In a second there was a puff of blue smoke and then another as the cylinders began to fire. Faster and faster the propeller turned and the engine roared out as the powerful radial began running smoothly. White smiled a toothy grin at Mike as he called for the second engine to start. Again the propeller turned and suddenly gained speed as it too felt the heat of combustion. Mike felt sheer exhilaration. You could actually feel the vibration of the big engines through your seat, shaking you as if they were straining to fly free. With further orders, the lines were cast off and the Catalina began to make her way toward the open water of the bay.

  White showed Mike how to adjust the pitch of the propellers and the mixture of the throttles and then called for takeoff positions. Taking the throttles in hand, he slowly pressed them forward to their stops. The huge radials began to roar as all 2,400 horses drove the three bladed props faster and faster. The Catalina began sliding quickly through the water and Mike could see white contrails appearing and circling the propellers as the tips flashed through the dense air. White kept the aircraft straight using the rudder pedals while holding the stick and yoke steady. It was then that Mike noticed the wing tip floats were no longer in the water. Slowly, gracefully, White eased the stick back and the plane lifted into the air.

  For the next three hours, Mike learned the aircraft, its mannerisms and quirks. As the sun was going down, White brought the Catalina back to the bay and eased her down until her hull touched water again. Keeping the stick pulled back and the engines at idle, the plane kissed the first wave, then came down in the next and settled into the water. The taxi ride to the pier was anticlimactic.

  It was only after White shut the engines down that Mike realized how much that plane had drained him. She was a real hands-on ship. No autopilot, no hydraulics to help with the controls, just sheer muscle power. With the engines off it was suddenly strangely silent and still. But the excitement was still there.

  After saying their good-byes, Mr. Ramey shut down the simulator. “What do you think?”

  “Perfect,” Mike said. “Just one thing,” he said seriously, stopping Ramey. “Can I keep her?” he then said with a grin.

  The two men chuckled as they walked out of the simulator.

  The Captain, Thompson, engineer Pike, Dr. Noland and Commander Tosh stared intently at the small computer Hadaie had brought to the briefing. Everyone had heard of the find and had seen some of the data from the archaeological team sent to study what they were all now calling “The Village.” With the exception of the first few people from the planet who had entered the place, the Nacerian military had kept it sealed off from intruders, allowing free access only to the scientists from the Alliance and from Professor Aanod and his team. Captain Dickson had given the task of studying the computer to Hadaie. After a full day and night of study, he had called the meeting and then refused to say anything until he had arrived. Hadaie entered the room and had placed the computer in the middle of the conference table. During the process of his analysis, Hadaie had carefully cleaned the unit and brought any deficiencies back to their original capabilities. The case gleamed under the overhead lights.

  Hadaie then took his seat at the table.

  After a moment, the Captain started the meeting. “Well Commander, you called the meeting, I assume you have been able to fully translate what is on this machine,” he said to Hadaie.

  “I have sir, and I find it most intriguing,” he began. “This is the equivalent of what, on Earth, was referred to as a laptop computer from the early 22nd century. The primary function was to store and replay a number of visual, audio and written media as desired by the owner. I have inspected the operation of the unit and it has a central processor capable of operating at 520 gigahertz per second with a storage unit capable of storing 16 terabites of information. The unit was three quarters full of information when it was last shut down 4,793 years ago on what was known as the month of Shamar, on the 28th day,” Hadaie said to the group.

  “I was able to connect to the computer with my mind. Although the data flow was generally slow by comparison to the Lexington computers, I was able to download all of the information to the Lexington computers for analysis. The information is now translated and available for study in both English and in Theran. I believe you will find it quite interesting,” he said.

  Captain Dickson was watching Hadaie. He was not volunteering the information as readily as he usually did. Obviously something was bothering him. “You seem a little disturbed by all of this, Commander. Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  “No sir,” said Hadaie, looking at the Captain with a concerned stare. “It seems somewhat overwhelming at the enormity of what I have found so far. I find it difficult to begin,” he said slowly.

  “Then I suggest you begin with who these people were and where they were from, to start, we can proceed from there,” the Captain said.

  “Yes, sir,” Hadaie said. Then he began looking at the others. “According to what I have found, including an encyclopedia in the memory, this culture began nearly 100,000 years ago as humanoid life first began to make advances on this planet. They called themselves Antherans and they evolved in a similar way to humans on Earth, first from lower species and then evolving as humanoids to our equivalent of the year 2229. This culture had all the same technology as is usual for a society of this age, with breakthroughs in medicine, science, humanities and natural abilities including space travel. For example, by the year 2151, they had developed spacecraft and had landed astronauts on all of the planets of this system. They had also developed what we would call an impulse drive that had taken them nearly to the speed of light. I saw references to experiments in what we called space compressing using subspace fields in some university articles saved in memory,” Hadaie said as he led the briefing. “I also was able to access the natural surroundings of this planet. Like Earth, these people had a problem with pollution and the poisoning of the planet by industry. These people used giant underground ventilation scrubbers to clear their air and renew it. Most importantly, the atmosphere of this planet used to be as dense as the Earth’s, and about twice the depth as the current atmosphere,” he said.

  Thompson gave him a puzzled look. “But how could a planet reduce its atmosphere?” he wondered.

  “Better yet, how could it be done and the inhabitants survive?” Dr. Noland asked.

  “I believe I have found the answer to that as well as why everything seemed to stop at the year 2229,” Hadaie said. Everyone around the table stopped and stared at him.

  “I have found evidence that this planet was struck by an asteroid approximately 15 kilometers in diameter in that year. According to the diary entries of the owner, Mister Ojen Faalone, the asteroid struck the planet at 4:30 p.m. on the first day of Metim, 6 months before Shamar. All the communities, including his, had put up their shielding systems for protection, and over the next six months the communities were covered over in a deep layer of dirt and ash. Their power systems were left on automatic and the people continue to survive. However, they had not counted on the asteroid hitting exactly where it had, or the amount of debris it would send into the atmosphere. Nor did they count on a failure of the shielding system on their botanical gardens. Their botanical gardens were connected to their community, and with the collapse of the shields, their food supply was gone. By the beginning of the fourth month the people began to starve to death. Because of the constant layering of debris from the collision, they could not get to any neighboring communities to get help, and communications between communities eventually failed. Eventually, the people here simply gave up and stayed in their homes to await death.”

  “How horrible,” said Tosh.

  “They were buried alive,” said Noland. “That would explain some of the readings I got from the bodies. The absence of certain vitamins and minerals. One man looked as if he had a form of scurvy,” he said.

  “It sounds lik
e they knew it was coming and had set up small communities and pockets of civilization to try and survive, especially if they had set up gardens for food in each community along with shielding systems,” Pike said.

  “It sounds to me as if they had a lot planned, but it just wasn’t enough,” Thompson said looking at the Captain.

  The Captain was thinking through the puzzle. Something wasn’t gelling. “I agree, Number One.” He looked at Hadaie. “Were the inhabitants then the same as the inhabitants now?”

  “Yes sir,” Hadaie said. “DNA sequences changed very little between then and now.”

  “Then some of the people survived,” he said. “But there are questions unanswered. If they were already that far advanced in space travel, why didn’t they try and divert the asteroid, or evacuate the planet? Or if they couldn’t, why didn’t they maintain their technology and wait out the collision and the Dark Age afterward and simply continue on?” Dickson wondered aloud.

  “I believe I have the answer to one of those questions sir, and that is one reason I have been so concerned,” Hadaie said.

  “What did you find?” the Captain asked.

  “It is one of the last diary entries of Mister Faalone. It has been translated. Would you care to view it?” Hadaie asked.

  “Certainly”

  Hadaie entered a command into the keyset beside his seat. The image of the same older drawn, obviously starving man appeared that they had seen before. The circles under his eyes told much of his plight. He looked up from the table he was sitting behind and stared at the viewers.

  “This is the 24th. Little Guala, the Daughter of Osan, died last night. Osan and I have been friends nearly all my life and despite her suffering, I really hated to see her go. Poor old Osan has just given up. He told me he was going to sit down in his chair and wait for it. I pray he won’t have to wait long.” The man chuckled a moment. “I remember the fun we had going bird hunting in the fall of the year. Osan never could bag as many as I could. A finer person will never live.” He took a sigh and then got angry. He slammed his fist on the table. “Damn Beran and his people! They promised to take all of us on those ships and find a new world to live on. All the time and effort we gave to building them. The things we sacrificed to make them a lifeboat for all of us.” He shook his head. “I never did trust that man. Our systems here could have been so much better if we hadn’t sunk everything into those ships. And then he simply took off and left us.” He gave another sigh and then a smile. “Little good it does us now. Poor little Guala. The prettiest blond hair I ever saw. She gave Osan so much happiness. And me too. I hope Beran finds a lingering death for leaving us here to die.” Then he paused a moment and seemed to labor at catching his breath. “I know I can’t last much longer. We ate the neighbor’s dog two weeks ago and that was the last meal available. Even then it was only three bites per person. If anyone finds this, we all did our best. It just wasn’t meant to be,” he said before the image blinked out.