Castle Dreams

Five Planet

They stumbled through forests of boulders, following a twisting path. She could walk, but the pain in her side was excruciating, or so Gene guessed from her constant grimacing and lip-biting. He helped her along while glancing constantly skyward, expecting strange, hostile spacecraft to appear at any second.

But whoever was in pursuit seemed to have lost the scent. Gene guessed that the three craft he had seen streaking through the planet’s upper atmosphere had either overshot their intended landing site or were deploying into a wide search pattern.

He asked, “Do you think their instruments got a fix on you as you landed … uh, crashed?”

“They were tracking me as I deorbited, but I employed …” She grunted as she stepped up to a ledge. “I used every deception ploy and decoy device that the lander had to offer. Something might have worked.”

“Seems to have.”

“They’ll be following phantom sensor readings for a good while. We may have time enough to reach the test mine — if we’re lucky.”

“Test mine?”

“Yes, a test shaft and a number of tunnels, if the information I have is correct. Production mining never commenced here, and the facility was mothballed. Unless scavengers found it, there may be an operating multiphone there.”

“Some kind of radio?”

She gave him a curious look. “What strange terminology you use. Radio? No. It doesn’t broadcast on the usual spectra. It employs paired virtual photons to propagate probability waves through …” She shrugged. “You must be a bumpkin from the darkest of galactic provinces if you need the principles of superluminal [3] communication explained to you.”

“Yeah, you might say I’m from the boondocks,” Gene told her.

She frowned. “Could it be that you don’t speak Universal? I seem to be understanding you, but I just suddenly realized you’re actually speaking some other tongue. Do you have a running translator working?”

“Sort of.”

“It must be very sophisticated. You had me fooled.”

“It is sophisticated, very,” Gene said. “It’s downright magical, in fact. How far to this mine thing?”

“It should be just over this next ridge. Uhhh …”

She sank to her knees.

“Take it easy. Do you want to rest?”

“No!” She forced herself to rise as he assisted. “We must get there and send for help. It’s only a matter of time before they realize they’ve been fooled and begin to recognize our life readings hidden in the false data.”

They moved on. The pink sky looked darkly ominous now, as if warning of a strange storm to come. The orange scrub moved nervously with the breeze. The rocks looked greener here, shading from verdigris to jade.

They made their way across rugged terrain for a good ten minutes.

“Kind of obvious question, and maybe I’m missing something,” Gene said, “but won’t your broadcast on this multiphone gadget — By the way, it is a broadcast you’re talking about, something that can be detected easily?”

“A multiphone transmission can be detected by anyone with a multiphone receiver anywhere in the universe.”

“I see. So my question is, Won’t your transmission give our position away?”

“Not at all.” She was out of breath. “No way to … determine the origin of a multiphone transmission … omnidirectional … uhhh.”

“We’ve got to slow down. You could be bleeding again.”

She suddenly pointed. “There!”

Gene looked ahead. An inverted hexagonal umbrella, looking very like an advanced communications dish, was jutting above the crest of the next hill.

“Isn’t this the first place they’ll look?” he asked.

“Not if the lander’s decoy drones succeed in convincing the Irregulars that I came down on the other side of the planet,” she said. “They won’t search here until they realize they’ve been hoodwinked.”

“Another obvious question,” Gene said as he helped her up the steep rise. “Why do they want you?”

She was silent.

“Just thought I’d ask,” he said.

“How do I know you’re not an Irregular agent?”

“Would I be helping you?”

“You could be leading me into a trap while trying to get me to divulge information without resorting to either torture or mind probe. Not that either would yield anything of value.”

“I concede the point.”

She gave him an analytical look. “But I don’t think you are an Irregular. You’re a bit of mystery. You haven’t even mentioned your ship. If you have one,that is the first place they would have looked — unless your ship is in a stealth mode that is beyond their capacities to defeat. In which case, you might just be a freebooter.”

He said, “In which case I might be tempted to turn you over to your pursuers for any reward they might offer. Are they offering a reward?”

“None that I know of,” she replied. “The Supreme Command of the Irregular Forces of the Liberation would probably thank you for contributing to the cause of bringing down the central government of the Dominion of Worlds. And then they would likely kill you to cover up any traces of their actions here.”

“Oh.”

“But you are free to take the gamble that they might just impress you into service. They do that, you know.”

“I’m not impressed,” Gene said. “But don’t worry, I’m not about to meddle in affairs I know nothing about. All I know is that you’re hurt, you’re in trouble, and you’re the shapeliest shuttle pilot I’ve ever seen. I just want to prevent further harm from befalling you.”

“You are a strange one. Where is your ship?”

“Don’t have one, sorry.”

“Then …” She fell silent as they neared the tall silo-shaped building, prickly with numerous antennae, that stood on the slope of the next hill. Behind it stood other functional structures. The silo was buff-colored with a yellow door at its base. The door’s only feature was a square shiny plate.

She slumped to the ground in front of the door, exhausted. Gene bent to inspect the plate.

“Some kind of electronic lock, I guess.”

When she caught her breath she said, “No doubt the security system has already scanned us and decided we’re unlikely candidates for admission.”

“How did you plan on getting in?”

She unzipped a pouch on her pressure suit and withdrew a small black box with dials and readouts on it. “This.” She fiddled with the settings, then handed it to him.

He took it and examined it. The markings were indecipherable, but somehow he tumbled to the thing’s function. There was an adhesive strip on the back.

“Timed charge?”

She nodded. “It’s powerful enough to take out the side of the building, so it must be set back a distance. Put it about …” She sized up the building. “Here.” She pointed.

He walked to the spot. “Right here?”

“Yes. But —”

“What?”

“There is one flaw to my plan,” she said glumly, “such as it is. They’ll readily detect any major energy discharge.”

“Now, that’s a problem.”

“Yes.” She crossed her legs and let out a breath. “I didn’t have much time to think this through. But I suppose the only thing to do is rush for the communications room and get off the transmission as quickly as possible. After that the only thing we can do is hide in one of the tunnels.”

“Where they’d have us neatly cornered.”

“True.” Her purplish-blue eyes rolled. “I suppose it’s useless.”

“Don’t give up yet.”

Gene approached the door and eyed it up and down.

“Do you have any ideas?” she asked.

“This security system you mentioned, the way you phrased it —” He ran a hand over the smooth yellow-painted metal of the door. “Is it controlled by an Artificial Intelligence?”

“Of course,” she said. “How else could a security system know friend from foe?”

“Right. If we did get in, we’d have to contend with it. True?”

“We’d have to take it out.”

“Hmm. First we have to get in. I’m going to try something.”

“What?”

“Little magic trick I know.”

Gene squared himself in front of the door and extended his right hand, bringing the palm up flush with the metal plate.

She watched with interest.

““Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston pie,”” he began.

She was very interested. One pale eyebrow rose.

““A fly can’t bird but a bird can fly,’”[4] he finished.

He repeated the couplet several times, keeping perfectly still, fixing his gaze straight ahead.

Presently the door emitted a high-pitched tone. It emitted several more in a complex harmonic sequence, then beeped dissonantly. After a few more seconds it slid aside with a hiss.

“Amazing,” she said.

“Nothing to it.”

“Whatever was that?”

“A little facilitation spell. I can’t do much in the way of hocus-pocus, but I can do a door-opener in worlds with manageable indigenous magic. Fortunately, this is such a world.”

She guffawed. “You’re a magician?”

“An inept one. Please, I’m very sensitive about it.”

She laughed.

“Don’t you have any compassion for the handicapped?”

“I have no idea who you are or what you’re up to,” she said, “but you do have style, that much I’ll say.”

“Style is the last refuge,” he replied as he helped her up, “of those who are short in the substance department.”

The strange building was dark inside. They entered cautiously.