Escape Velocity: The Anthology Read online

  Regrets? Not really. Not yet. After all, he had saved humanity.

  Finally, the tram arrived. Banger entered and dropped a token into the metal depository. A rush of heat greeted him. Then he noticed the galeaper sitting in the back seat.

  Banger stopped dead, holding onto the ceiling rail as the tram took off. The crater in his stomach grew wider, and he stared at the galeaper, perhaps the one who had chased him in the drudge. Still wore a tan jacket. Orange hair. A face like lumpy mashed potatoes with the skins left on. He, or someone else, had done a number on this galeaper.

  Odd as the galeaper looked, why would anyone suspect he wasn’t human?

  Banger pulled out a syringe from the lunch bag, uncapped it, and walked toward the galeaper. This inhumane creature had seen his last day on Earth. He reached the back of the tram and peered down at the galeaper, almost feeling sorry for the dejected little thing: nowhere to go, out of work; just like him. The galeaper looked at the syringe, then at Banger, his black eyes piercing through Banger, the way Farber’s eyes had. Banger detected a slight discolored wrinkle between the little guy’s eyes, as if he were in great pain.

  Banger reminded himself why the galeapers came to Earth. Inhumane. But Farber had been Banger’s friend, and Farber was humane, he just had had a strange political agenda. It was clear to Banger that the galeaper before him now had missed its target and would never try to harm a human again. Banger decided to spare him. The little guy would be dead soon anyway, and Banger had many questions to ask him before that happened.

  He recapped the syringe and tucked it back inside his lunch bag. Then he removed his backpack, sat beside the galeaper, and pulled him close. Banger thought he heard him cry, the way Farber once had done.

  The tram stopped in the drudge and Banger escorted the battered exile off. As they emerged from the station, he spotted Percy and his orange-haired gang and a few other undesirables lingering beneath a street lamp. Upon seeing Banger, they pointed glossy weapons at the galeaper tucked under his arm.

  Banger shielded the galeaper. “No,” he said. “He’s harmless now. We’re going to ask him a few questions.”

  Banger searched the group as they lowered the weapons, looking for Molly. A large, dark-skinned Asian man with a bright smile stepped in front of him. Molly appeared from behind the Asian man, and Banger’s heart soared. For a moment he had thought that the galeapers had got to her. But she was safe, and he hoped she brought the hair dye, because it was time to end the war.

  Zuggyzu and the Humans

  Sheila Crosby

  “No. Absolutely not! It's far too dangerous.” The Controller threw Zuggyzu's report in the recycling bin. Zuggyzu's spots turned black with disappointment. “It's not that dangerous, sir. The air's breathable, the gravity's weak.”

  “And the dominant species are blundering giants who could squash you flat and not even notice. Half the exploration team vanished, and yet you say it’s not that dangerous?”

  “We've learnt so much since then! I can disguise myself, sir. I understand humans. It's easy to fool them because they only see what they expect to see.”

  “You're obsessed, Zuggyzu. I'm sending you on compulsory leave before you become as irrational as those humans.”

  “But, sir! They're destroying their planet.”

  “I want your leave application on my desk in fifteen minutes.”

  Zuggyzu trailed along the null-grav strip back to his perch. Humans fascinated him. He was amazed by their family units, their loyalty to one another; and the democracy thing. Now, if his kind had democracy, he could appeal when the Controller told him where to go. The idea hit him so hard that he crashed to the floor and bruised one of his corners. The Controller hadn't told him where to take his leave. His spots pulsated with scarlet determination.

  The sun was setting as Zuggyzu landed in the Canary Islands. He could see two humans pointing up at the sky. No doubt they thought the lens shaped cloud was a flying saucer. Didn't they know that this hill constantly formed such clouds? It was so easy to fool humans.

  He hid the spaceship with vegetation, and unloaded his planet-rover. He had morphed it, and now it should be well disguised on Earth. He was right. The lovers were so mesmerised by the cloud, they never noticed the battered soda can rolling past their feet. Zuggyzu headed for the observatory, which was perched on top of the island's highest mountain. If anyone could understand his message, it would be astronomers.

  Pedro opened the dome of the William Herschel Telescope and gazed at the perfect royal blue sky. If only it would cloud over so he could go to bed early! After four years of operating telescopes for the English, the glamour had worn thin. Still, another year of it, and he could buy his girlfriend a cow. She'd like that. They agreed that agriculture didn't pay as well as science, but it was a lot saner.

  The night's observers arrived. “Sorry we're late,” said the man with a pink pony-tail and wrinkles. “I'm Dr. Kaz Reid. This is my student, Anne Grey.”

  Pedro shook hands, trying not to stare at Dr. Reid's Legalise Cannabis T-shirt and psychedelic trousers. Most observers came for just three nights, and many had their heads in space, but this was the first time he'd seen one with his body stuck in the sixties.

  “I am Pedro. The telescope will be ready when I fill the cryostat.”

  “Cool. I'll leave Anne with you while I find the staff astronomer.” Dr. Reid waved and vanished. Visiting astronomers were supposed to arrive by 4pm. Pedro shrugged. It wasn't his problem. He started down the stairs. “Your first time here?”

  Anne nodded. “It's much bigger than I expected.”

  “Everyone says that.” It was one thing to read that the telescope was eighty feet high, and another to see it. They reached the observing floor, and Pedro pulled the tank of liquid nitrogen the last few yards.

  “It looks like R2D2,” said Anne.

  Pedro smiled. “Not so clever.” He slid the nozzle into the cryostat and opened the valves. The tube furred with frost, fog tumbled and rippled over the floor, and finally liquid nitrogen spat out. “Finished,” said Pedro.

  He turned off the valves, removed the probe, and released the pressure. A yard of fog roared sideways, like a dragon's sigh.

  “I'm cold,” said Anne.

  “Yes. Is nice you don't have to sit in here looking through an eyepiece. Is much warmer in the control room, no?”

  Anne smiled. Her strawberry blond hair and twitchy movements reminded Pedro irresistibly of a hamster. He'd hoped she'd be as nocturnal as a hamster too. They were supposed to work all night, but sometimes the astronomers snored. As they went through to the control room, Pedro saw something fly into the dome. Odd. None of the local birds flew at night. He must have imagined it.

  Zuggyzu shut his eyes as he flew into the dome in his pop can, fifty feet above the ground. He told himself these vast heights didn't count on a low-gravity planet; it was the thin air that made him dizzy. He flew down to the metal boxes hanging below the main mirror, and turned on his echo sounder. It all made sense. The collected light went through a maze of mirrors and lenses to produce an image, like a photo. He thought it seemed a bit primitive for such a huge telescope. The light detector was cooled by liquid nitrogen, for goodness sake, and it was a mere inch across! He saw they still converted the light into electricity like an antique digital camera. Maybe building an eighty-foot high telescope wasn't so remarkable when you were six feet tall yourself, and the gravity was only 9.8m/s. This giant could barely spot a candle on their moon!

  Zuggyzu's heart sank. If humans were stupid then his plan wasn't likely to work. But he'd come too far to give up. He'd get more data and improvise. A hundred and sixty tons of telescope swooped ‘round, sending Zuggyzu scurrying. The vast dome rotated to align the open shutter with the telescope. Everything was moving, and without a fixed frame of reference, Zuggyzu felt giddy.

  When the telescope settled down, Zuggyzu flew back to the instruments and continued his investigation. Those wires leadi
ng from the detectors must go to whatever passed for a computer in this backwater. With such primitive detectors, they might even store their data on magnetic tape.

  Dr. Reid bounded into the control room. “Ready?”

  Pedro sighed. All this enthusiasm was tiring. “I finish the calibrate now. What is your first object?”

  Anne handed him a list. “This one. Then we do a blind offset to our colliding galaxies.”

  Pedro typed co-ordinates into the computer. Soon the telescope was tracking the galaxies across the sky, as the Earth turned on its axis.

  Dr. Reid typed busily into the instrument control computer. “We'll take a one hour exposure. Right, what shall we talk about while we're waiting?”

  Anne said, “While we were coming up the mountain, the taxi driver told us that aliens visit the observatory all the time.”

  Pedro nodded. “Montana Matos down in Garafia, it makes clouds formed like a lens. People think they are flying saucers.”

  Dr. Reid raised His eyebrows in mock astonishment. “You mean it's not true? Shame!”

  Pedro smiled. I wonder which planet you come from, he thought.

  Dr. Reid put a Beatles CD in the stereo unit.

  Zuggyzu had it all worked out. He would unplug the wire from the detector and send his own message to the computer instead. Once the humans decoded it, they'd understand how close they were to runaway global warming. Even better, they'd have the formulas for nice clean, safe nuclear fusion. It was so easy to save a planet.

  Pedro thought it wonderfully appropriate when the astronomers bawled out the chorus from The Fool on the Hill.

  Finally, Dr. Reid's computer beeped and he displayed the image they'd just taken. “Blue meanies!”

  Pedro and Anne came over. Instead of a pretty image of two colliding galaxies, the screen was covered with random dots.

  “I never see this before,” said Pedro. “I call the duty engineer, yes?” He picked up the house phone and punched in a number.

  Claire, the engineer, arrived five minutes later. “What's up?”

  Dr. Reid pointed at the screen. “What is that?”

  Claire's eyebrows went into orbit. “Mind if I have the keyboard?”

  Dr. Reid moved over and Claire checked the detector. Temperature in range, responding to network messages – all completely normal, except for an image that resembled a piece of modern art. “I'll take a look in the dome,” Claire said.

  As Zuggyzu struggled to reconnect the cable, something grabbed him round the middle. His appendages recoiled into his spots in his startle reflex. Oh no, thought Zuggyzu. Oh no!

  Zuggyzu felt himself lifted up, and carried along. He seemed to be in a human hand, but he didn't dare poke his eyes out to look.

  Pedro was relieved when Claire came back so quickly. She said, “Some joker's been playing around with the instruments and left this behind.” She lifted up something furry, but Pedro didn't bother to look closely. “And a Coke can I can recycle. Anyway, I fixed a loose cable, so let's try another exposure. How about Saturn?”

  Pedro moved the telescope again. Saturn blazed on the screen, and only needed a ten second exposure. Everyone stopped breathing while the data read out and displayed ... one pretty picture of Saturn. Pedro had never enjoyed the rings so much.

  Dr. Reid said, “So it's fixed. Ok, back to our galaxies, Pedro. Anne, delete the duff file. Pity it wasn't a message from the aliens. I could fancy the Nobel Prize.”

  “Right,” said Claire, “I'll go hang this up in my car.”

  Zuggyzu felt sick. He had failed. He was trapped. He was going to die.

  The hand carried him, swaying in great arcs. They seemed to be going down steps. He heard a door creak, and then felt cold air flowing past, so he must be outside. Another door, metal this time, and the hand left him dangling in space. He heard the human leave.

  “It's OK. She's gone,” said a voice. He poked his eyes out. A female of his species dangled beside him, along with something green.

  His companion said, “Are you the rescue team? I've been here for months.”

  “But what do you eat?”

  “This,” she said, pointing at the pine-tree car-freshener hanging beside them. It smelt delicious.

  “Why have they hung us here?”

  “I don't know.” Her spots turned a puzzled violet. “They call us fuzzy dice. They don't seem to realise that we're sentient at all.”

  Zuggyzu sighed. “No. Humans only see what they expect to see.”

  A Smaller Step

  Michael Anderson

  The two astronauts waited patiently in the main corridor on the west side of the station, dressed in pressure suits and carrying helmets.

  One of them sat on a metal bench; the other stood at the door to the Ready Room and peered through the glass porthole, watching the activity inside.

  “What are they doing?” asked Matthews.

  “They have a lunar map spread out on the table. They're studying it and talking about something.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “Hell if I know, Rick. I don't speak Russian.” Walt Davis peeked through the window again.

  Matthews sipped from a small container of orange juice and shrugged. “They probably want to go on a rock hunt. This is the first time Russians have been allowed up to Lunar One since it opened. They don't have too many moon rocks.”

  Davis gave up spying on the cosmonauts and joined his partner on the bench. “Maybe we should take them over to site R-6. There's a good representation in that area. They can collect all the friggin’ rocks they want.”

  “They don't look like geologists to me.”

  “Who do you think they are, then?”

  “Could be your typical black-bag types,” said Davis. “Probably sent up here to check out the base.”

  “Should we do anything?”

  “No. If they got this far, they passed the security clearances. Just keep an eye on them.”

  “Good idea. Those two give me the creeps.”

  A few minutes later, the two Russians finally emerged from the Ready Room. They were dressed in dark blue coveralls with the initials of the Russian Federation stitched on the pockets. Both were about thirty years of age and wore serious expressions.

  One of the Russians offered his hand. “I am Alexei Gordonov, and this is Mikhail Greshchenko. I can speak English fairly well, but I will have to act as interpreter for Mikhail.”

  Matthews returned the handshake firmly. “Rick Matthews. I'm your rover driver. This is Walt Davis from the lunar science team. We have orders to take you out from the base, but no one has said where you want to go.”

  “It is about sixty kilometers from here,” said Gordonov.

  Davis interjected. “Are you joking? Sixty kilometers! No one has been more than ten klicks from this station since it went operational!”

  “He's right,” said Matthews. “What you ask is dangerous. If we drive out that far and have a problem with the rover, rescue could be impossible. It's extremely risky.”

  “I am told your lunar rovers can travel over two hundred kilometers on a full battery charge.”

  “Well, yes...”

  “That's not the point,” Davis interrupted angrily. “He said that if something went wrong we could be in serious trouble. We've been out in the rover more than twenty times in the last three months. We buried our axles in some loose dust on one trip. We had to wait for the B-team to pick us up. When they finally found us, we were down to our last fifteen minutes of oxygen.” He paused, and then added, “We were only six kilometers from the base that time, too. You want to go ten times that distance. Impossible.”

  The four astronauts stared at each other in silence. Finally, Greshchenko said something to Gordonov in Russian. It sounded like a question.

  Gordonov nodded to his partner in response.

  “What is it?” asked Matthews. “What are you two talking about?”

  Gordonov took an envelope from his pocket and he
ld it out reverently. “Mikhail reminded me to show you this.”

  Matthews opened the letter.

  Office of the President

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Please provide cosmonauts Mikhail Greshchenko and Alexei Gordonov any assistance they require and the full use of all resources at Lunar One Research Station/NASA. This matter has been designated Top Secret. You are expressly forbidden to disclose any facts or discuss anything concerning this project, under penalty of law.

  “What does it say?” asked Davis.

  “It's an order from the White House,” said Matthews. He thrust it to Davis. “It's signed by the President.”

  Davis read it quickly and groaned. “Told you it was black bag stuff.”

  The cosmonaut plucked the letter from Davis' hand and tucked it away. “We need to reach a certain site. And we are not spies, Mr Davis.”

  “All right,” said Matthews. “Where the hell do you guys need to go?” The Russian held up a palm-sized computer. A series of numbers showing lunar surface coordinates scrolled across the tiny screen. “Here,” he said. “Do you know of it?”

  “Of course I do,” said Matthews. “Okay, so you know people in high places. And the President says we have to help you. But he didn't order us to throw our lives away, either. We'll take you out, but if it’s rocks you want, you will have to limit the load. We're going to pack as much oxygen as we can cram into that rover. If something happens, we're not sitting out there waiting to die with our asses hanging in the breeze.”

  “Carry all the oxygen you wish,” replied Gordonov. “We are not seeking geological samples.”

  Conversation was brief and uncomfortable as the four astronauts moved steadily across the stark landscape. The Rover was fully pressurized and rolled through the lunar dust at fifteen kilometers an hour. Thick windows comprised much of the upper section of the Rover, providing stunning views in all directions.