First Encounter Page 6

  “Copy that,” Delta said as they plunged into the trees. Darkness enveloped them once more, and they snapped their ring lights on. Delta and Commander Taylor began scanning the tree tops. Leaves from the first canopy formed a hazy ceiling about a hundred meters up. “Think the other monkeys got the memo?” Delta asked.

  “The memo?” the ambassador asked.

  “That we’re the good guys.”

  “Are we?” Commander Taylor countered.

  They left that question hanging. Time will tell, Clayton thought. Founding a human colony on this world was bound to lead to friction with the natives. The Native Americans had been friendly enough to European settlers until they’d begun colonizing in earnest.

  The eerie glow of phosphorescent vegetation growing on the forest floor competed with the beams of their head lamps as they tracked toward the blinking red dot of Dr. Grouse’s locator. Massive trees swept by them, bigger than any redwood back home. These trees had to be ancient. So how long ago had that invasion taken place? And how did these alien monkeys still remember it?

  “We need a name for them,” Ambassador Morgan said suddenly.

  Silence answered him.

  Clayton decided to bite. “I assume you have a suggestion.”

  “What about Trappans? Or Trappans?”

  “I like monkeys,” Delta said. “Call it what it is.”

  “They have ten legs, and they evolved on another planet,” the ambassador said. “And they have beaks like birds, and quills like porcupines. They are hardly analogous to monkeys from Earth.”

  “Po-ta-to, po-tah-to.”

  “How about we call you a monkey?” Morgan replied.

  Delta turned to glare at him, and Morgan subsided.

  Commander Taylor and Clayton traded grim smiles.

  Rainbow bugs began spiraling around them, making the forest seem more wondrous and beautiful than sinister or dangerous.

  They walked on, the minutes passing slowly. Every now and then they caught a gleam of alien eyes watching them from the trees, but this time nothing leaped down on them, and no glowing neck collars flared out to blind them. A low rattling sound followed them through the forest, however. To Clayton that said it all. We’ll let you walk around in our forest, but we don’t have to like it.

  As they drew near to the red dot blinking on Clayton’s HUD, he turned and nodded to the others. “Eyes and ears everyone. We’re coming up on Dr. Grouse’s location now.”

  “He still hasn’t moved...” Commander Taylor pointed out. “It’s been almost thirty minutes. I hate to say it but...”

  “Then don’t, Commander,” Clayton replied. “No one is dying today.”

  “Unless they’re already dead,” Ambassador Morgan muttered.

  Clayton chose not to repeat himself. They’d see soon enough.

  “Fifteen meters...”

  A pair of massive trees were flanking Dr. Grouse’s location, but there was no sign of him lying in the rotting carpet of fallen leaves or the faintly glowing underbrush that grew in that alien compost.

  “Where is he?” Commander Taylor asked.

  “Doctor Grouse!” Clayton called out, trying him on an open comms channel as they covered the last few steps to his location.

  Static was the only reply.

  He activated his helmet’s external speakers and tried again. “Doctor Grouse! Say something if you can hear me!”

  No answer.

  They reached the exact spot of the locator beacon, but they still couldn’t see him. Everyone cast about, searching the forest floor with their head lamps.

  “He has to be here...” Taylor said. She got down on her haunches and began clearing away spongy masses of rotting vegetation at their feet. Clayton watched intently, expecting to see a hand, a foot... a broken helmet with dead, staring eyes.

  But there was no sign of Dr. Grouse or his locator anywhere. Taylor straightened with an irritated sigh, shaking her hands and flinging away stringy gobs of muck and rotting leaves.

  “I don’t get it,” Ambassador Morgan put in. “What are we tracking if he isn’t here?”

  “He has to be around here somewhere,” Taylor insisted.

  “Maybe it’s just the tracker,” Delta added in a low voice and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Something chewed him up and spat out his implant. I doubt the monkeys like the taste of metal.”

  Clayton was just about to reply when he saw something. A nearby tree had a giant cleft in the trunk, a shadowy hollow where something—or someone—could have been hidden. Being more optimistic, Clayton Thought maybe Dr. Grouse had dragged himself in there to hide from his attackers.

  Clayton walked wordlessly over to the tree and shone his light into the gap in the trunk. Shadows parted and...

  Nothing. It was just an empty hole in a tree.

  Delta and Commander Taylor came up behind him, shining their lights in.

  Clayton stepped inside and began feeling around through the mess of leaves and roots on the floor of the arboreal cave. It was big enough in here to fit a small house. He moved around in circles, feeling through the ground cover for what they all knew they were really looking for. A body.

  Clayton’s hand grazed something. A chill raced down his spine and he felt what he thought was a hand.

  He pulled on it, expecting to uncover the body that the Trappans had buried here. Instead, his arm pulled taut against a handle. Something groaned, and the floor lifted up, leaves and all.

  Taylor gasped, and Delta jumped back, his rifle snapping up to aim at the ground.

  “What in the...”

  Clayton heaved, putting his back into it. That section of the floor folded away completely revealing a long sloping path snaking away into darkness.

  “Shit,” Delta muttered.

  “I’m getting a stronger signal from Dr. Grouse,” Taylor said. “He’s definitely down there somewhere.”

  “I thought we were right on top of the signal?” Ambassador Morgan asked.

  “We were, but we were tracking in 2D,” Taylor explained. “We didn’t think to check vertical displacement. He’s sixty meters down.

  Clayton grimaced. “That’s a small skyscraper. So much for the Trappans being peaceful.”

  “Or primitive,” Delta said. “Digging a tunnel that deep takes equipment. Heavy machinery. They probably hit bedrock after the first ten meters or so.”

  “Not likely,” Commander Taylor said. “The trees here are massive, so the soil must run very deep. Let’s not make too many assumptions yet.”

  “We have exactly thirty minutes of air left,” Clayton said, turning to her. “How far do you think we’re talking to get to the locator beacon?”

  “Hard to say. If the slope stays constant, we’re looking at about one meter down for every five meters forward. Say three hundred meters from here.”

  “That won’t take more than a few minutes,” Clayton decided.

  “If we run the whole way back, we’ll make it,” Taylor added.

  “And if we don’t?” Morgan asked. “We’ll have to take off our helmets and breathe the air.”

  “Then we’ll share the same fate as your girlfriend,” Clayton replied.

  Morgan bristled at the outing of his supposed-to-be secret affair. What he and Dr. Reed didn’t know was that it had never been a secret. Spaceships are far too small for secrets to last long.

  “The real problem isn’t possible contamination; it’s passing out from a lack of oxygen,” Taylor said. “Taking off our helmets will only buy us another ten minutes.”

  “Then I guess we’d better hurry,” Clayton said. Gripping his coil gun in both hands, he started down into the tunnel. “Alphas, on me.”

  “Copy...” Delta said.

  Chapter 11

  Booted feet echoed down the trail behind Clayton, thumping with quasi-hollow reports in the root-filled ground. Those roots were everywhere, jutting like hairs from the walls of the tunnel, but the walls were otherwise smooth and hard, as if they�
��d been paved with concrete, or carved out of solid sandstone.

  Darkness was thick and heavy at the end of the tunnel. Light from their headlamps vanished into empty space as the path snaked down endlessly before them. Watching the map on his HUD, Clayton realized they were winding down in lazy circles, a corkscrew spiral into the bowels of Trappist-1E.

  Delta was close behind him, his breathing loud over the comms. “I don’t like this, sir. We have no idea what we’re walking into, and I’m pretty sure this is the only way in or out.”

  “We can’t leave Dr. Grouse down here, Lieutenant,” Clayton replied, shaking his head.

  “Yes, sir...” Delta sighed.

  “What if he’s already dead?” Ambassador Morgan asked from the back of the group.

  “His life signs are steady,” Commander Taylor replied. “That means he’s alive.”

  The trail wound around another circle, still no end in sight. Clayton glanced at the map. The beacon was just nine meters away. They rounded another corner and he half expected to find Dr. Grouse lying on the trail, half-eaten, barely alive...

  Instead, their headlamps flashed off a reflective surface. A metal door. Clayton stopped, his rifle’s stock pressed hard into his shoulder as he sighted down the barrel, waiting for that door to burst open.

  “Still think they’re primitives?” Delta asked.

  Clayton checked the range to the beacon: five meters. Then he checked his remaining air: twenty-five minutes. They needed to get in and out fast if they were going to make it back to the shuttle on that little air.

  “No sign of a door handle,” Taylor said.

  “Might not need one,” Delta replied. “Maybe it opens automatically. Keyed to a remote or biometrics.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Clayton said. “Let’s make a hole.”

  “On it, sir,” Delta replied, stepping past Clayton and dropping to his haunches to examine the barrier.

  “Back it up,” Clayton ordered as he matched action to words. The others shuffled away with him until they were almost around the corner from the door.

  Delta laid a remote-detonating charge in front of the door and hurried to join them. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled.

  A muffled boom rumbled through the tunnel and a blast of air whipped by them. “On me,” Clayton said before taking his coil gun in a two-handed grip and stalking back around the corner.

  The tunnel was bathed in smoke, but Clayton could see that the chamber on the other side of the door was brightly-lit. His gut told him this was a mistake, but it was too late to back out now. He inched forward, hands sweating inside his gloves as he crept toward the ragged, glowing metal frame where the door had been a moment ago.

  “Activate infrared overlays,” Clayton whispered.

  Acknowledging clicks sounded back over the comms.

  Clayton scanned for heat signatures through the smoke as he neared the broken door. Of course he didn’t know if the Trappans were cold-blooded, but it was the best he could do.

  Stepping through the hole, Clayton emerged in a gleaming metal chamber with high, echoing ceilings that stretched into darkness above them. The floor was made of something like polished concrete, and they were surrounded by strangely-colored holograms and oddly crafted control consoles. Those displays and consoles crawled high up the curving brown walls. He wondered how anything could access the upper levels, but a metal rail running in front of the displays made him think of a tram. Equipment beeped steadily from the distant recesses of the chamber. Rows of what looked like cubicles lay at the far end. They had open ceilings, but were surrounded by four walls, and each of them had a glass door.

  “What is this place?” Ambassador Morgan asked over the comms.

  “Looks like a lab of some kind,” Commander Taylor replied.

  Clayton nodded along with that. One look at the nearest chair told him that it wasn’t designed for the ten-legged Trappans. Those metal railings were running in front of the ground level consoles, too. Simple metal bars. What would sit on a bar?

  It’s a perch, he realized, peering up into the shadowy recesses of the ceiling once more. The high ceilings were another clue.

  “I think an avian species built this,” Clayton said, searching the shadows with his infrared overlay for signs of life.

  Not a blip.

  “Not the Trappans, then,” Ambassador Morgan replied.

  “No,” Clayton confirmed, bringing his gaze back down. Dr. Grouse’s beacon was coming from the cubicles at the back. He swallowed hard, his skin crawling with terror. “Whoever they are, they’re not here now. Let’s get Dr. Grouse and RTB.” Clayton began stalking toward the tracking signal.

  “RTB?” Ambassador Morgan asked.

  “Return to base,” Commander Taylor supplied.

  They reached the first of several cubicles and Clayton peered in through the glass door. A big metal stretcher with something strapped to it filled the room. The brown body with ten legs draped over the sides told Clayton they were looking at a Trappan. The creature’s head was encased in a gleaming helmet of some kind with wires trailing from it to a nearby console. Equipment beeped steadily around the creature, and a bundle of tubes trailed from its chest.

  “Found him!” Commander Taylor crowed.

  Clayton whirled around to find her standing at the last door on the right. Clayton counted doors to ten cubicles in all as he ran to join her. Half of them were filled with Trappans. The other half were empty.

  “We need to get this door open,” Taylor said while struggling with a horizontal metal loop for a handle. It was located down near the floor, about two feet off the ground. Another clue that they were dealing with something very alien.

  “Shit on a stick,” Delta said as he crowded in.

  Dr. Grouse was lying on a metal stretcher that was ten sizes too big for him, strapped down, and apparently unconscious. His helmet was off, cast away carelessly to one side, but he had a breathing mask on. Whoever or whatever had put him in here must have understood his body’s needs for higher concentrations of oxygen than the local air could provide.

  Just like the Trappan in the first room, Dr. Grouse had some kind of glossy black cap on his head with wires trailing to a nearby console. He also had three tubes snaking out of his chest. One was blood red, another black, and another clear.

  “Just break it,” Clayton said, dragging his eyes away to see that Taylor was still trying to force the door open via the handle.

  “Yes, sir.” She straightened and flipped her coil gun around, butt-first to the door, and hammered the glass hard enough to draw a thunderous boom from it.

  Not a crack.

  “Damn it, it’s strong!” Commander Taylor said.

  “Delta, you give it a try—No offense, Commander.”

  She stepped back. “None taken, sir.”

  Delta could bench four hundred pounds in Earth gravity. Down here at point seven Gs, he could probably lift a small car. He stepped up and hammered the door just as Commander Taylor had done. Same result. He tried twice more without effect and then stepped back, breathing hard and rolling out his shoulders. “No can do, sir. We’ll have to blast it open.”

  “We do that, we risk injuring Dr. Grouse.”

  Clayton glanced up to the top of the wall. One of them could reach the rim of it with a boost. “We’ll climb over.” He bent to one knee and cupped his hands. “Commander, you’re up!”

  She stepped into his hands and he launched her up to the wall. She grabbed it and pulled herself over. A moment later she hit the deck on the other side of the door and waved. She spent a moment examining that door from the other side, then bent down and said, “Hang on, Captain,” just as he was about to boost Delta over.

  Something thunked and the door slid aside. Clayton hurried in.

  “It was locked from the inside,” Commander Taylor said, pointing to a simple mechanical bolt on the inside.

  No key or automatic mechanism would open that. It meant that whoever was run
ning this place usually came in from the air. The doors were probably just there to drag the subjects in and out.

  Clayton glanced up again into the deepening shadows of the ceiling, half-expecting to see eyes peering down.

  He didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched. He nodded toward Dr. Grouse and crossed the cubicle to reach his side. “Commander, help me disconnect him.” The tubes snaking from Dr. Grouse’s chest could be dangerous to remove. Damn it if Taylor hadn’t been right about going back for Doctor Stevens. He went to try the helmet first, grabbing it in both hands and easing it off. It slid off easily, revealing trickles of dried blood around Dr. Grouse’s ears. He set the helmet down on the floor and breathed a shaky sigh.

  Taylor was tearing Dr. Grouse’s suit away around the bundle of tubes protruding from his chest. A rubbery sucker was attached to the end of that bundle of tubes, and it was connected directly to Dr. Grouse’s sternum. Had they drilled holes through his chest?

  Clayton grimaced.

  “There’s no easy way to do this,” Commander Taylor concluded.

  Clayton nodded quickly. Air was down to eighteen minutes. Even at a flat sprint they weren’t going to make it back in time. Hopefully by now the HEROs had landed and they could call for those drones to come to them with spare O2 packs. “Give me an action plan, Commander.”

  “We cut the lines and tie them off. Let Doc deal with extracting the catheter.”

  “Big ass catheter,” Delta said.

  “Do it, Commander,” Clayton replied.

  Taylor reached to her belt and drew her multi-tool. Folding out a serrated knife, she grabbed the bundle of tubes about a foot away from Dr. Grouse’s chest and then bent them to put a kink in the lines. Some piece of equipment began screaming somewhere in the room. An alarm of some kind.

  “Better hurry!” Delta said.

  Taylor sliced all three tubes with a quick flick of the wrist. Blood and unknown fluids spurted all over her suit. The lines still connected to the machines sprinkled all of them, twisting and snaking through the room under the pressure of the fluids pumping through them. Delta grabbed those tubes and tied them off just as Taylor did the same with the ends still attached to Dr. Grouse’s chest.