The Portal
By
Kaitlyn O’Connor
(C) Copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor
Published by New Concepts Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Cover Art by Eliza Black, Sept. 2007
ISBN 978-1-60394-077-1
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
The trip had been long and tedious, but it would’ve been a lot more boring, and, truth be told, probably impossible, if not for the frog DNA.
Dr. Alexis Conyers tried to push that stray thought to the back of her mind, as she had every time it had surfaced since she’d agreed to accept mutation for the sake of mankind, but it wormed its way to the forefront of her thoughts again as she struggled to focus on the activity around her.
Their mission might not be mankind’s last chance, but there was no denying it was their best hope. Sacrifices were necessary if they were to have any expectation of pulling it off. She’d accepted that.
They’d all accepted that.
And it still bothered her to think about the alien DNA strands that had been webbed to her own, making her less than human anymore.
She still felt human. She still looked human, but the bald truth was that she wasn’t entirely human anymore and she wasn’t as comfortable with that as she would’ve liked to be. It made her wonder if the desperation to save the human race hadn’t already gone beyond what it should’ve.
Harnessing the comet had seemed hair-brained and brilliant at the same time … and so simple it almost made everyone feel stupid they hadn’t thought about it before. Scientists had studied comets and meteors for decades. Other scientists had trained their gazes on the search for a truly habitable world, one that would support human life without requiring terraforming, or building biospheres, or lugging tons of life support equipment light-years just to provide the minimum to sustain life.
But, until fairly recently, no one had thought to put the two projects on the same page.
They’d colonized the Earth’s moon, Mars and its moons—moons belonging to half the planets in their solar system, but that was less than ideal. Not one ‘world’ they’d conquered could sustain life without a tremendous amount of work and the ever present danger that some vital piece of equipment would fail and wipe out the entire colony before help could arrive.
As bad as things had gotten on Earth—and it was pretty damned unstable—it was still better than anything they’d been able to come up with—although there was some comfort in not having all their ‘eggs’ in one basket, in knowing it was less likely, now, that a single cataclysm could wipe out the entire human race.
The probes they’d finally set down on comets to piggyback a ride through the universe had succeeded where all other efforts had failed, though. The comets had carried their ‘eyes’ further than they’d been able to reach before, faster, and given them a far better look at the universe.
With the comet borne, deep space probes, they’d found the perfect new home for humans--as close to perfect as they were likely to find in time to do them any good, at any rate. The problem was that the planet was so far away it made the ordinary methods of colonization impractical if not completely impossible.
That had resulted in ‘hair-brained/brilliant’ strategy number two—their mission. Instead of trying to build a fleet of deep space ships to carry colonists to the new world, they’d built the U.E. (United Earth) Plymouth, crammed it with everything needed to build the transport portal, a handful of scientists/engineers, barely enough supplies to sustain those scientists/engineers, and sent them forth in the fastest ship ever built by man.
It had still taken nearly ten years to reach the new world, and there wasn’t enough room on the ship for the supplies needed to sustain human life for that long. It would’ve taken a far bigger ship to do that, more time, and more money.
That was when the geneticists had stepped in with ‘hair-brained/brilliant’ plan number three—the introduction of foreign DNA into the scientists which would allow them to be frozen for most of the trip—literally frozen.
Alexis’ stomach churned and a shudder raked its way up her spine.
It wasn’t altogether a new idea. Geneticists had been working for years to help the human race evolve with the same speed as their world, adapt swiftly to the changes to keep them from going extinct.
The introduction of frog DNA was still radical, though.
Never before had anything other than the DNA of other mammals been utilized.
And she was still surprised she’d woken up after being deep frozen for so long.
They’d tested it as much as possible, of course, before they’d blasted off into the unknown, but there’d been no time to do the years of research that needed to be done, should have been done before it was pronounced ‘safe’. The compromise had been to deep freeze them for relatively short spans of time, awaken them to do routine checks of the ship and equipment and make certain everything was still working properly, perform or check minor course corrections as needed, and then deep freeze them again.
All in all, they’d been awake only a year, total, of their ten year trip, thawed for a matter of weeks and then back into the deep freeze, but even with the work they had to perform during those waking times the trip had seemed excruciatingly long and tedious.
Alexis dragged in a deep, cleansing breath, trying to make herself relax as the engineers finally took their places and began the process of ‘lighting’ up the portal to full power.
She sincerely hoped it was going to be full power this time. They’d already lost two probes. They were down to one. If the signal boost they’d jerry-rigged didn’t reach the counter portal on Earth this time, they were going to be down to drawing straws to see who would become the guinea pig. There wasn’t much else they could scavenge off the U.E. Plymouth without the risk that they’d be permanently stranded on New Earth, and no one wanted to even think about that.
It crept into her mind anyway and Alexis glanced around at her fellow travelers.
Dr. ‘Mel’ Melody Carson, the lanky, almost six foot blonde navigator, was the closest person of the group that came to being a ‘friend’, although the two of them were hardly bosom buddies. She was currently chewing her last fingernail off at the quick while she stared at the blank screen of her console as if she could will the thing to light up. Linda, who in Alexis’ opinion had far more boobs than brains, but who was supposed to be a crack mechanical engineer, was staring off into space, her lips moving as if she was either going back over her calculations … or singing to herself … or maybe praying?
That would be about as helpful as crossing her fingers, Alexis thought dryly, wondering if Linda had always been this ‘spacey’ and she just hadn’t noticed, or if the freeze/thaw process had left part of her brain frozen.
Richard ‘the dick’ Sloan, one of the two ‘grunts’ they’d brought along for protection and to help move heavy but delicate equipment, was scratching his balls as he, too, gazed off into space. His side-kick, Gary Pitts, a real whiz, was crouched on the ground nearby, chewing on the stalk of a plant that hadn’t even been analyzed yet for possible toxins.
Drs. Li Chung and Angus O’Neal had their heads together over the main control console and Dr. William ‘Bill’ Long was staring at the gauges of the power unit. The three men were brilliant and held so many degrees in so many fields it was almost sickening.
Alexis tried to block the nasty thought that they had no reason to focus on anything besides their studies since it wasn’t likely they’d had women to distract them, but she was only marginally successful. It wasn’t that any of the three were deformed or just plain ugly, but they were certainly no better than average in looks and, more importantly, to her way of thinking, anyway, their personalities left a lot to be desired when it came to companionableness, let alone charm. A block wall had more charisma than the three of them put together.
She was fairly certain she’d never heard anything come out of their mouths beyond scientific speculation. She’d yet to see even one of the three open their mouths to say anything remotely conversational. They might as well be eunuchs. She was pretty sure not one of the three had even looked at Linda and registered that she was a female … and recalled that they were male, which, as far as she was concerned, said it all.
Any male that could work around Linda and focus on their work instead of her wasn’t a red-blooded male.
She hadn’t considered when she had set out on the mission that she might be stuck with the crew of the U.E. Plymouth for the rest of her natural life—and no one else—She’d been honored to be chosen. She’d been focused on the mission.
One ‘waking’ year of travel and three months of roughing it on the new world later, she was finding it harder and harder to ignore the possibility that she might never see anyone but this group again.
And, with the exception of Mel, she didn’t even like them.
Not that she disliked them, but the degrees that separated ‘like’ from ‘dislike’, she’d come to realize, were like a vast ocean when one viewed it with the perspective that this group might be ‘it’, the only people she was going to be around for the rest of her life.
Not that there was a lot of reason to worry about it. After three months on New Earth, as careful as they’d been with their supplies, they were still running dangerously low on everything and they’d been too focused on completing their mission to spare the time to explore their new world and search for local resources to replenish their dwindling supplies.
If they didn’t get the portal open soon, they probably wouldn’t be around long enough to have to worry about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives.
It worried her that they hadn’t been able to hail Earth.
It worried everybody, although they had carefully avoided the subject.
Regardless of the distance they should have been able to reach someone, hear something from mission control in all this time. If nothing else, it seemed to her that one of the furthest colonies, closer to the edge of their solar system, should’ve picked up their attempts to communicate. Not that that made them close by any stretch of the imagination, but still ….
Dr. Long was speculating that there was something about the planet itself that was interfering with communications.
It was as good an explanation as any, and completely unsupported by research of any kind since they hadn’t brought along a lot of equipment for testing the environment. That wasn’t an area of their collective expertise. She had a degree in anthropology, but that wasn’t terribly useful in their current situation.
It couldn’t be avoided, though, or at least she hadn’t been able to avoid the knowledge that the crew of the U.E. Plymouth was pretty much useless for anything other than the focus of their mission. They had all the skills and knowledge they needed to build the portal and none of the skills or knowledge they would need to live on this new world if they found themselves completely alone.
The ‘grunts’ might make it. The rest of them were toast if they couldn’t accomplish their mission and bring through the people it was going to take to build a colony.
“Ready, Alex?”
Alexis jerked as O’Neal barked the question at her, surging to her feet from her perch on the supply box she’d been using as a bench. “I’ve checked the probe out thoroughly. It’s good to go.”
Almost before she got the words out, the whine of the power unit reached a near ear-splitting pitch. A gust of air rushed past her as if the portal was a living thing and had just sucked in a deep breath, and static electricity danced along her body, making the fine hairs prickle.
Alexis stared at the portal, feeling a surge of adrenaline rush through her. Her heart danced a little jig of awakening of hopefulness.
“Mel?”
Melody’s head jerked up when O’Neal barked at her, her eyes wide.
“Anything?”
Melody ducked her head, staring at her vid screen again. “Phantoms,” she said, referring to the streams of light visible beyond the portal, which created a tunnel-like effect through space. It was actually more along the lines of a cannon, designed to break down the cells of both living and inanimate objects and shoot them across time and space where it reassembled them—theoretically. The portals on the other colonies did, of course, but then they hadn’t needed the range this one did. Supposedly, the distance shouldn’t make one iota of difference, but then, what did they know when it had never been used over such a vast distance?
“Wait! It’s stabilizing!” she exclaimed excitedly.
Long, who’d been diverted by the conversation, returned his attention to the power unit. “Stable here, as well—minor fluctuations.”
Melody looked up. “I’ve got a fix on mission control.”
“You’re sure?” Chung asked sharply.
“Confirmed,” O’Neal said, a note of excitement in his voice, now, or as close to excitement as the man ever got.
“The portal on the other end isn’t responding,” Chung announced after a few moments.
“Knock, knock!” Richard said.
Gary snickered.
Alexis tamped her irritation. “Should I release the probe?”
“Hold,” O’Neal snapped. “Let’s make sure the power’s going to be sustained this time.”
“Why aren’t they opening the other portal?” Linda demanded of no one in particular.
“Maybe they’re out to lunch?”
Alexis sent Richard a narrow eyed glare that time. “I’m glad you find this so damned humorous, Dick.”
His beefy face reddened.
“Can we activate it from here?” Linda asked, an edge to her voice that Alexis recognized as fear and/or hysteria, mostly because she was struggling against both herself.
Chung and O’Neal exchanged a look. “Possibly,” Chung finally answered.
“Possibly? Or definitely?” Linda demanded, sounding more anxious than before.
“What would the point?” Richard ground out.
“The point,” Linda snapped, “is to get home!”
Richard gave her a disgusted look. “And what would be the point of that? We ain’t been able to contact anybody. Nobody’s answering the call to activate the gate. Don’t tell me it hasn’t occurred to any of you ‘brains’ that nobody’s fucking there or the damned portal would’ve been opened on the other end?”
* * * *
“How much time, by your calculations, has elapsed on Earth?”
The food Alexis had just popped into her mouth, space rations and nothing to get excited about to begin with, lost what little appeal it had had as she waited for Chung’s response to Long’s question.
Chung’s dark eyes leveled on Long speculatively. “The theory before we left was two hundred years—give or take fifty. I have no new data to add that suggested a need to recalculate.” He shrugged. “Or to factor in that might yield a different calculation.”
The Plymouth party had clustered around the portable plasti-table and bench units as they generally did for their evening meal and Alexis exchanged a look with Mel, who sat across from her.
“You think Richard’s right?” Mel asked. “Something’s happened?”
Long turned his head to stare at her. “Obviously something has. I wasn’t particularly alarmed when we failed to hail anyone. There was no absolute guarantee when we left that we’d be able to communicate across such a distance. Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been a problem, but we maintained the connection precisely thirty minutes without any response from the other side. The signal was good on our end. The only conclusion to be drawn from that is that mission control, for whatever reason, has been abandoned.”
Alexis felt her stomach clench around the food she’d been gamely trying to swallow. “Why would they just abandon it, though? Wouldn’t they relocate it to one of the other colonies if something cataclysmic happened on Earth?”
Long’s gaze was almost pitying. “One would think so.”
“Maybe they did? Maybe we should try the coordinates on the other colonies?”
O’Neal looked at Linda in surprise. “You know as well as we do that the portal is linked to the one on Earth. If they’d moved it, the portal itself would have adjusted. We wouldn’t have to key in the change. Besides, it connected. There was no response.”
Linda glared at him. “Maybe we could try recalibrating the portal to one of the portals on one of the colonies?”
“Dangerous,” Chung responded succinctly.
“And it isn’t dangerous staying here!” Linda snapped. “Look around you!”
The comment was rhetorical since they were inside habitat. There wouldn’t have been any point anyway. New Earth was primal, lush, and teaming with life—paradise, but a raw, untamed one, beautiful and without a doubt deadly due to the completely unknown plant and animal life. Alexis had imagined that it must be a great deal like Earth had been when it was young, despite the fact that it had four moons, instead of one, and rings very much like Saturn’s. Not surprisingly, although they’d taken great pains to avoid any contact, there was even evidence of emerging intelligent life.
She didn’t especially want to find out how intelligent, but they’d scanned the area thoroughly before they chose their base camp site and she had hope that it wouldn’t be an issue. Richard and Gary were the only two members of the group who’d even ventured beyond the perimeter they’d set up when they’d landed and established base camp. They didn’t know what was ‘out there’ and none of them were anxious to find out when they weren’t really equipped to deal with it.
Aside from that, the mission was top priority. They couldn’t take the chance of losing a single member even if they’d felt brave enough to face the challenge. Gary and Richard were the only members of the party that were armed and the only ones who knew how to use the weapons, or at least the only two who’d had any training in using them.
“If the other portals happened to be in use,” Chung said finally, “and we did manage to tie in, we’d risk dispersing their particles across the universe. You know that.”
“So we do nothing?” Linda demanded tautly.
‘Going home’ hadn’t been on the agenda, but, like Linda, Alexis hadn’t been able to think about doing much else since they’d landed on the primitive world. If civilization wasn’t coming their way, she was more than ready to pack it up and head back to it herself. They’d accomplished their mission. If ‘home’ wasn’t coming, it was time to go back. “I could re-program the probe to activate the portal on the other side,” Alexis suggested tentatively.
Everyone at the table turned to stare at her. It unnerved her for a moment, until she realized their intent focus and the fact that not one of them had immediately denounced the suggestion meant they were as anxious to go back as she was.
“You’re certain of that?” O’Neal demanded in the gruff voice typical of him.
“I am,” Alexis said staunchly, quelling her doubts.
Richard shoved to his feet and slammed his fist down on the edge of the table, making everyone jump. “What the fuck is the point? They’re gone! Don’t you get it? We’re all that’s left!”
“You don’t know that!” Linda virtually screamed at him, leaping up from her seat, as well.
“Right!” Richard snarled. “I’m just guessing that if there was anybody around, they might have turned the damned portal on! Obviously, they either completely forgot about us after they shot us into the ‘great beyond’, or everybody’s gone.”
Chung, Long, and O’Neal exchanged uncomfortable looks. “Hysteria isn’t going to solve anything,” O’Neal said finally.
For a moment, Alexis thought Richard was going to completely lose control of his temper. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest as his eyes narrowed on O’Neal, his fists clenching and unclenching, the threat of violence palpable.
Regardless of the fact that it had made him far stronger than a ‘normal’ man, which was supposed to be an asset, it occurred to Alexis that webbing ape DNA to his might not have been a wise decision. It seemed to her that the man was having a very hard time controlling a tendency toward violence.
“Easy for you to say,” he growled finally, relaxing his stance with obvious effort. “You wouldn’t know an honest emotion if it bit you in the ass. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you three were fucking droids!”
Chung studied him with a face devoid of expression. “We are as deeply concerned about this unexpected turn of events as you are, Sloan. But we realize we must analyze the situation carefully before a decision is made.”
“Analyze?” Gary snarled, joining Richard. “And while you’re sitting around with your thumb up your ass, analyzing, maybe you can tell us how the hell we’re going to survive if it turns out there ain’t anybody on the other side? We may not be engineers and scientists like the rest of you, but we can sure as hell count. We’ve got enough rations left for a few weeks at the most. The fucking habitat is already starting to fall apart because it was never intended to be anything but temporary shelter and we don’t know a hell of a lot more about what’s out there than we did when we landed—except that once the fucking power goes there’s plenty of things out there that aren’t going to be out there anymore. They’re going to be in here—with us—and I don’t think they’re too worried about whether or not we’re edible!”
“Exactly my point!” Linda snapped. “We’re completely unequipped to deal with this environment. We have to go back. Whatever happened, regardless of what state things are in, Earth is where we belong. We stand a much better chance of surviving there than we do here.”
Alexis studied Linda, tamping the urge to agree with her—at least openly.
She did agree with Linda’s assessment, but she wasn’t certain whether it was because there was any real logic to it or if it was just an instinctive urge to run ‘home’ because this place was so completely alien and the thought of getting up close and personal with raw nature terrified her. For all they knew Earth might be just as ‘alien’ to them now as this place was.
Almost as if he’d read her thoughts, Chung suggested the same thing. “If, as Sloan surmises, something has happened and no one is there, can we be any more certain that we could survive if we did go back to Earth? If our civilization has been destroyed, would we not do as well to remain here and try to survive?”
“On what?” Richard snapped. “With what?”
“And who gets the women?” Gary growled.
Alexis felt her jaw slide to half mast. When she glanced at Mel and Linda, she saw what she thought was probably identical expressions of revulsion and outrage on their faces. She didn’t know if she was more insulted and disgusted because it had been Gary who’d dropped that little nugget of dung in their midst or if it was on principle. She thought it was both.
“The most reasonable thing to do would be to share,” Long responded.
Long’s comment stunned Alexis almost as much as Gary’s had. Talk about an absolute breakdown in civilization! In the space of five seconds they’d gone from a group of respected scientists and equals to the completely archaic view of men vs. women? “Now, wait just a fucking minute!” she snapped, surging to her feet, as well. “I’m just as well aware of the role of sexual congress in the general health and mental well being as the rest of you and the government’s stance on that in this type of situation. I signed on just like everyone else and I don’t mind sharing myself if there’s a need, but we happen to be people! It isn’t up to any of you to decide what to ‘do with us’!”
Richard gave her a look she didn’t like. “Things have changed,” he said, his voice a low, threatening growl.
A shiver of uneasiness went through Alexis, but she stood her ground. “Meaning?”
“Meaning if its going to come down to survival of the fittest—and it sure as hell’s looking that way—you might want to consider who’s best qualified around here to help you survive.”
Chapter Two
“Our best chance is through that gateway, whatever’s on the other side,” Alexis murmured quietly.
She heard a rustle as Mel shifted on her cot. The inside of their quarters was like a pit, without any light at all since they’d been conserving energy. It was impossible to tell if Mel had shifted to face her or turned away. “You think Sloan’s dangerous?”
Alexis turned in the direction of Linda’s voice, although she couldn’t see her any better. “He’s having dangerous thoughts. That’s for sure.”
“Neither Dr. Long, Chung, or O’Neal will be a party to what Sloan and Pitts have in mind,” Mel volunteered, a distinct quaver of uneasiness in her voice that proved conclusively, as far as Alexis was concerned, that she didn’t believe for a minute any of the three, or all of the three, would have any more say in the matter than they did.
“Maybe—maybe not, but what will they do to stop Sloan and Pitts?” Alexis countered.
“He couldn’t have been serious. They just need a little rec. Everybody’s tense,” Mel said, doubt threading her voice. Or maybe it was blind hopefulness?
“You want to volunteer to soothe the savage beast?” Alexis asked dryly. “I did him last time. He’s a selfish prick and he’s too damned rough.”
Silence greeted that. “You think, maybe, it’s some sort of side effect of the chromosome webbing?” Linda asked uneasily.
“How would I know?” Alexis retorted irritably. “I didn’t know him before. Maybe he was always a caveman throwback.”
“I didn’t notice that he seemed particularly aggressive before we left Earth,” Mel volunteered tentatively.
“Well, you must have had your head in your ass!” Alexis snapped. “He’s military. They don’t pick them for their docility, and they certainly don’t train them to be docile.”
“There’s no need to be insulting!” Mel snapped.
Alexis swallowed her irritation with an effort. “You’re right. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t really matter what he was like before, does it? We have to contend with now.”
“He did have a point,” Linda said after a few moments. “You’re an anthropologist. You know that better than anyone.”
“Which is exactly why I said our best chance is to convince everyone to go through the portal. If Sloan doesn’t think there’s going to be any repercussions or disciplinary actions taken against him—and obviously he’s already thinking that way-- there’s no telling what he’s capable of. Besides, I simply refuse to believe that everyone’s gone. Maybe something terrible happened and civilization has fallen, but there will be other people there. There has to be, and if I’m going to be thrown into a survival situation anyway, I’d rather be on home turf. I don’t know about you two, but I don’t like my choices here.”
“Sloan or Pitts,” Linda agreed, a quaver in her voice. “We should talk to O’Neal. He’s got a degree in psychology. He’ll know if Sloan’s a threat and how much of a threat.”
* * * *
“We have to analyze the data,” Chung said in a perfectly reasonable voice.
O’Neal and Long nodded in agreement.
Alexis studied the three men in dismay for several moments, glanced at Linda and Mel, and then tried again. “I understand scientific protocol requires that, but we have a situation here.”
“Which might only be aggravated if we attempt a jump without studying the data we’ve retrieved from the probe,” O’Neal said brusquely.
“Did you not notice how … erratically Sloan and Pitts are behaving? Doesn’t it bother you at all that the only two people here with weapons, trained to use them, are showing signs of aggression?”
O’Neal reddened slightly. “High testosterone levels. They need rec.”
Alexis, Mel, and Linda exchanged speaking glances. “We tried that,” Mel volunteered. “If anything Sloan only seems to be becoming more controlling and aggressive. He doesn’t ask anymore. He just grabs whichever one of us happens to be unlucky enough to be most handy at the moment. You’ve been studying the data for a week. Surely if there was anything seriously wrong with the environment you would’ve found it by now? He’s talking about shutting down the portal because its using too much energy.”
That comment seemed to pierce the cocoon of scientific aloofness enveloping the men as nothing else. It was O’Neal who responded, however. “I’m in charge of this expedition!”
“Exactly how do you think you’re going to stop him from shutting it down if he decides to?” Alexis snapped. “We’re going to be trapped here without the option of returning if you don’t make a decision soon. Sloan knows he’s the strongest among us and none of us can stop him from doing whatever he wants to do. He keeps saying this isn’t a scientific expedition anymore. It’s a military operation.”
O’Neal came to his feet. “I’ll speak with him,” he said decisively, striding from the main living area of the habitat.
Alexis turned to watch him, feeling a sinking sensation of doom in the pit of her stomach. Without questioning the sense of impending disaster, she surged after him, catching him by the arm as he reached the door. He stopped, looking down at her hand with an expression of shock before fixing her with his frowning gaze.
“You’re not going to confront him?”
“I have every intention of doing so, yes,” he retorted coldly. “I am in charge of this expedition. He takes his orders from me.”
This was a hell of time for him to remember he had balls, Alexis thought furiously! “Don’t do it! I’m telling you he’s dangerously unstable!”
He peeled her fingers from his arm with an expression of disgust. “I have a degree in psychology, young lady! I know what I’m doing.”
Alexis wasn’t certain why she followed him outside, perhaps the forlorn hope that she could still intervene, that she could think of something to say that would get through to him. She certainly hadn’t done so to witness his death.
* * * *
“He thinks he’s cowed us. He won’t expect us to do anything … not so soon after ….”
Mel lifted a tear stained face to stare at Alexis, her gaze as blank and unfocused as the eyes of Drs. Chung and Long. Her chin wobbled. “We need to bury him.”
Alexis felt sick to her stomach. “We can’t spare the time. They’ll be back. We have to go now.”
“You mean leave him like that?” Long demanded, outraged.
“For pity’s sake!” Alexis nearly screamed at him. “Do you think I like it? If we don’t go now we’ll never have another chance!”
Linda, who didn’t look as if she was in much better shape than any of the others, got to her feet. “What do we do?”
Alexis turned to stare at the woman. She was the next thing to a blithering idiot with terror herself. It took all she could do to stay on her feet. Mentally, she shook herself. “Weapons, water, food … we need to grab anything we think we might need that’s easy to carry … that we can grab fast. Long! Can you get the portal generator started?”
Long stared at her, glanced at Chung, and finally rose slowly from the seat where he’d collapsed when they’d returned from examining Dr. O’Neal’s body. After looking around a little vaguely, he began to shuffle toward the door. Resisting the urge to scream at him to hurry, Alexis grabbed Linda’s arm and began to haul her in the direction of the store room.
“Lights on!”
The moment the lights came on, Alexis headed for the weapons rack. Grabbing one of the pulse rifles, she slung it over her shoulder by the strap and turned to look for something else. Mel, she saw, had followed them. Like Linda, she was standing in the middle of the room, looking around blankly. “Find something to carry the stuff in!” she snapped.
“Sloan will kill us if he catches us with the rations.”
Alexis stared at her, fighting the terror gnawing at her guts. “And what are our chances of survival if we don’t have them and there’s no food readily available? Grab something, damn it!”
Alexis was almost sorry she’d yelled at Mel when her chin wobbled, but it seemed to jolt her out of some of her shock. Nodding, she disappeared out of the door. When she returned, she had a couple of pillow cases.
It was just a damned shame the planners of their little expedition hadn’t had the forethought to supply them with camping accoutrements. Canteens and backpacks would have been a lot more helpful than the thirty to fifty pound containers that held their water and food rations. Fortunately, the food rations were individually packaged. Grabbing handfuls, Alexis tossed them into one of the pillow cases. Her frantic movements seemed to communicate to Linda and Mel. They picked up their pace, tossing food and medical supplies into the cases. Linda grabbed a five gallon container of water. “There’s nothing else to carry it in,” she said when Alexis stared at it.
“I know. I was just wondering if we should take two. Mel, grab another pulse rifle.”
“I don’t know how to use it,” Mel complained even as she pulled one from the rack and slung it over her shoulder.
“We’ll fucking figure it out!” Alexis snapped. “We’re scientists for pity’s sake! We ought to be able to figure it out.”
Chung had disappeared when they rushed through the main living area again. Hoping against hope that he’d overcome his shock enough to go help Long, Alexis headed for the door. Relief surged through her when they reached the site and she saw that Chung was indeed at his console. The high-pitched whine that assailed her ears told her the portal was opening.
Dropping the pillow case she was carrying near the portal, Mel hurried to her own console and checked her read outs. Her heart pounding frantically in her ears with sheer terror, Alexis set her burdens down and unslung the rifle, examining it. Dismay filled her as she stared at the thing. It had so many buttons! Which frigging button did what, she wondered a little frantically? The button on the hand grip seemed self-explanatory. Undoubtedly it was what fired the weapon. But what the hell were the other buttons for? Range? Strength? Something else entirely?
Would it even fire if the necessity arose? Or was there some button she had to push before it would fire?
Giving up on figuring it out for the moment, she leveled the thing and began scanning their surroundings, hoping against hope that neither Sloan or Pitts would return from their self imposed ‘scouting mission’ and put her to the test.
“We’re at full,” Long announced.
“Connected!” Mel seconded him.
“The probe isn’t responding to the command to engage the other portal,” Chung said.
“Fuck!” Alexis exclaimed, not only because of that unwelcome announcement, but also because she’d caught a glimpse of movement in the jungle beyond their enclosure. “They’re coming back! I think I see them coming back,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else as she rushed to the console and began punching the keys with shaking fingers. “I’ve reset. Check it again.”
“Still nothing,” Chung responded after a moment of silence.
“Work, damn it to hell!” Alexis growled, punching the sequence in again before she lifted her head to stare toward the jungle once more. The moment she did, her gaze was snagged by Sloan’s as he parted the fronds of a plant at the edge of the camp.
Shock rippled over his features before rage transformed it.
“Oh god!”
“Primary portal engaged,” Chung announced as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Run!” Alexis screamed, charging from the console toward the portal. Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she swooped to grab the container of water and the bag of provisions she’d left without slowing appreciably. The heavy container of water nearly wrenched her shoulder out of its socket. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she lumbered up to the portal and fell through, the sound of pounding feet competing with the frantic tattoo of her heart against her ear drums.
Fire washed over her. Before her brain could even fully register the pain, however, nothingness engulfed her.
Alexis’ next awareness was of excruciating pain as she sprawled full length on an unyielding surface hard enough to force the air from her lungs in an inelegant grunt. The impact loosened her grip on the water container and the pillow case full of rations. The container went skittering in one direction. The contents of the pillow case scattered across the icy stone floor. The rifle slung across her shoulders slammed against the back of her skull, sending blinding pain through her head to compete with the fiery burning of impact and friction burns on her knees, elbows, and palms.
Someone tripped and fell across her even as she struggled to push herself to her knees. The collision flattened her again.
“Ow!” Mel exclaimed, rolling off of her.
It was dim in the room she found herself in, but enough light filtered in from somewhere to allow her to see the shadowy shapes of Mel, Linda, and Dr. Long. Scrambling to her feet, Alexis looked around for the control console a little desperately. Spying it at last, she sprinted toward it even as Linda and Mel began to scream.
Expecting any moment to feel a pulse blast in the back, she clawed her way around the console, quickly scanned the key pad and jabbed the power button to shut it down before it even occurred to her that it was probably too late.
Grabbing the rifle when that thought finally filtered through her mind, she swung the barrel in a wide arc, searching for the source of threat that had sent Mel and Linda into screaming hysteria.
Dr. Li Chung lay sprawled at the entrance to the portal. A black hole, still smoldering, was centered in his back.
Nausea rolled over Alexis. “Is he dead?”
Mel nodded jerkily, mopping at the tears streaming down her face with one hand and wiping the dampness on the legs of her jumpsuit.
Long moved to crouch beside him, lifting his limp wrist. Alexis stared at him hopefully until he finally dropped Li’s hand and settled heavily beside him.
“Do you think they can reopen the portal?” Linda asked jerkily.
Alexis stared at her. “I don’t know,” she responded finally, swallowing against the knot of fear that had wedged in her throat. “They’re not idiots. I suppose it depends on how badly they want to get it open.”
Long pushed himself to his feet. Moving to Alexis, he took the rifle from her hands and used the butt of the gun to pound the probe into pieces. “They can’t use that, at any rate,” he said with satisfaction when he’d finished.
Alexis, who’d simply watched in stupefaction as he destroyed the probe, stared at him with a measure of respect she hadn’t felt before.
“They might decide to risk it anyway,” Mel pointed out shakily. “I wouldn’t, but there’s no saying they won’t.”
Alexis nodded. Lifting her head, she looked at her surroundings for the first time. She shouldn’t have been surprised to see that it looked as if it had been abandoned long, long ago, but it still came as a shock to see the thick layers of dust and ancient cobwebs.
She’d hoped ….
“No one’s been here for a long time,” Linda said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“What do we do now?” Mel asked in a shaky voice. “We can’t stay here. If they come through ….”
Dragging in a shaky breath, Alexis crossed to the supplies she’d flung away from her when she’d sprawled in what had once been the main control room. “We should move.”
“Are we just going to leave poor Dr. Chung lying there like we did Dr. O’Neal?”
Anger surged through Alexis. “Do you think it matters to him … now?”
Dr. Long gave her a look. “If it was you …?”
“I’d be dead and beyond caring,” Alexis snapped, holding back her raw emotions with a supreme effort of will. “How are we supposed to bury him?”
Mel, Linda, and William looked at each other and then looked away. Dr. Long cleared his throat. “I suppose this would be a fitting tomb. His life’s work was wrapped up in the mission.”
The thought flickered through Alexis’ mind that it was liable to become their tomb if Sloan figured out a way to get the portal open again … assuming, of course, that he hadn’t flown into a rage and destroyed the other portal. He’d already killed two people. It seemed safe to say he wasn’t entirely rational. She glanced around when she’d finished gathering the supplies she’d scattered. “We could put him in the supply room,” she suggested tentatively. “At least that would prevent scavengers ….”
Linda looked horrified. “I don’t think I could touch him.”
“Oh for pity’s sake!” Alexis snapped. “First you complain that I don’t want to take the time to bury him and now you balk at helping to dispose of him ‘decently’! It’s not like we can call someone, damn it!”
“I’ve never touched a dead thing,” Linda cried angrily. “You’re an anthropologist!”
“He is Dr. Li Chung!” Dr. Long said coldly before Alexis could inform Linda that she studied cultures, not bodies, bones occasionally but not the recently departed. “I’ll carry him.”
Alexis watched him struggle to lift Dr. Chung’s lifeless body for several moments and finally moved to help him. When they’d settled him on the floor of the supply room, they stood staring down at him for several moments. “Would you like to say something?” Alexis asked Long.
He glanced at her, but finally shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he murmured in a shaky voice and then turned and left.
Wondering if he was apologizing to Chung or regretful that he couldn’t think of anything fitting to say, Alexis followed him.
They discovered when they’d managed to pry the door to the main control room open that it was the only part of the building still completely in tact. The further they walked, the worse the damage to the building, although it looked like the slow decay of time rather than the result of anything more specific, like a bomb—or nature’s fury in the form of killer storm or earthquake. By the time they neared the exit, they’d begun to have to climb over great chunks of debris where sections of the roof had fallen in and walls had collapsed. The building looked as if it was slowly deteriorating from the outside toward the central core.
Once outside, they discovered the sun was low on the horizon.
They also discovered that the city and wooded lands that had once surrounded the space center were gone. In their place was a vast desert that spanned the horizon in every direction.
With no idea what now lay in any direction, they finally headed west, hoping the sparse vegetation that dotted the sand dunes in that direction would lead them eventually to some sign of civilization. Three days later, exhausted almost to the point of dropping, they topped a rock strewn rise and saw vegetation in the distance. Alexis stared at it blankly for many moments, almost afraid to give up the sense of disbelief that suspended the breath in her lungs.
“It’s cultivated fields,” she finally said through dried, cracked lips. “Look!”
Long and Mel, who’d dropped to the ground to rest the moment she stopped, lifted their heads hopefully. “You’re right!” Long exclaimed, scrambling to his feet with renewed vigor.
Linda, who’d been trailing the rest of the party by a goodly distance, came abreast of them and then, sucking in a sharp breath of delight, dropped the supplies she’d been dragging and passed them, trotting more energetically.
Alexis was so relieved she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For days she’d fought the fear that she’d led them all to their deaths, prodding them to leave a world teaming with life for one that appeared dead. No one had said it, accused her with more than dull, fearful glances, but she’d known it must be running through their minds if it had occurred to her.
Uttering a choked laugh of gladness, Mel struggled to her feet and followed Linda. More than half tempted to drop her burdens so that she could walk faster, Alexis finally decided to err on the side of caution even if it took her a little longer. Switching the now half empty, only remaining container of water to her other hand, she picked up the pillow case containing the last of their supplies that Linda had dropped and headed down the slope behind the others.
They outstripped her, buoyed by their hope and excitement, moving faster and faster as they drew close enough to discern movement along the rows of the cultivated fields until they stopped as abruptly as if they’d slammed into an invisible wall.
“People!” Linda, who was by now as far in the lead as she had been trailing before, called back to them.
Alexis squinted her eyes against the bright sunlight, staring hard until she, too, saw the movement. Her heart was thundering with a mixture of excitement and exertion by the time she came to a breathless halt at the edge of the fields behind the others.
Wondering why they’d stopped so abruptly, she moved around them to see what it was that had brought them to a halt.
The people toiling in the fields had heard their approach and stopped, turning to look at them.
Except it wasn’t people in the fields.
Chapter Three
For many long moments, Alexis thought the light was playing tricks on her. She considered whether or not the time they’d spent in the desert had somehow addled her wits, or if the horror of witnessing Drs. O’Neal’s and Chung’s murders and the fear that had driven them to flee had made her crazed.
Clearly, if that was the case, she wasn’t the only one who’s mind was gone.
One glance at the others was enough to assure her that they believed they were seeing what she was seeing.
“They’re mutants,” Mel finally whispered in horror.
One of the creatures screamed abruptly. As if that sound had galvanized the others, they lifted their crude hoes and charged. For a full moment that seemed like an eternity, Alexis merely gaped at the beings charging toward them with farm implements raised like weapons. Abruptly, her instincts took charge of a mind gone completely blank. Whirling, she threw everything down and fled.
She had no idea of where she was going. Her mind was simply functioning on automatic, unable to reason, incapable of calculation. Around her, she was dimly aware that Mel, Linda, and Dr. Long were scrambling to keep up with her, pass her. In her periphery vision, she saw other creatures charging toward them from the fields and finally realized she’d simply turned and run along the edge of the field instead of retreating back into the wastelands they’d just left.
She had no real understanding of why she’d done so. Broken thoughts skittered through mind, almost too quickly even to grasp, but she accepted that there was no place to hide where they’d come from—nothing. She didn’t know if it was the need to stay near living, growing things, mere happenstance, or an instinctive urge to seek a place to hide, but she didn’t veer away even when she realized that she was still passing rows of plants where other strange beings toiled, and took up the chase as they ran by.
Her heart and lungs felt as if they were going to explode. She thought she might have stopped except that Linda and Dr. Long both stumbled, tripping one another up and then sprawling in the dirt. She threw a glance back as they disappeared beneath the tide of their pursuers.
When she looked away again, she saw to her horror that there were mounted creatures coming toward her from the opposite direction. Mounted on what, she had no idea—some domesticated beast.
Beasts riding beasts!
The others were assuredly beasts. Her mind hardly grasped it. Not humans, but walking and behaving as if they were, wearing the faces of … dogs and cats.
Changing directions abruptly, she headed toward the desert. There was no hope of hiding in the fields, not now … no hope of escaping, and she still ran, closing her mind to Mel’s screams as she, too, tripped and fell.
Something hard slammed into her back. She pitched forward. Her head swam dizzily and then blackness swarmed over her like the stinging of a thousand bees.
* * * *
Alexis had no idea how long she was unconscious, but it wasn’t nearly long enough. Pain jolted through her from so many directions she could hardly think for it. Slowly, her senses expanded, however, and she became aware that she was jouncing up and down, rocking, moving. Groaning, she opened her eyes. A moving sea of green greeted her and, for several moments, she thought she might throw up.
A hand fisted along the back of her jumpsuit, lifting her up. The suit cut into her throat, and her crotch, burning the tender flesh of her nether lips. It would’ve been hard to say which hurt worse, but thankfully after dangling her above the beast he rode for only a few moments, the man/beast that had captured her settled her before him on the beast he rode.
The pain subsided.
The fear escalated.
Wide eyed, Alexis looked around at the riders surrounding her and her captor as they emerged from the fields and turned along a hard packed dirt lane.
These beings looked very little like the ones who’d chased them from the fields.
On a dark night, she might have mistaken them for men—a very dark night—except that they were bigger than the average man.
They were warriors. That much was clear. On their heads, they wore helms of beaten metal. They wore breast plates made of leather, metal gauntlets that covered their arms from wrist to elbow and shin guards, also of beaten metal, strapped to their thick calves with leather strips. Each carried a heavy metal shield and, strapped along their backs, they carried sheathed swords.
Despite the fear clogging her throat, Alexis found herself sorting those impressions, adding them to the workers in the fields and producing the fact that these creatures, whatever they were, were certainly civilized, and just as surely—barely civilized. Feudal system popped into her mind. They were like … knights, she thought in stunned disbelief.
The muffled, whimpering sound that she’d barely acknowledged finally penetrated Alexis’ mind, drawing her gaze. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry when she saw Mel riding as she was, before another creature like the one that held her.
Tearing her gaze from Mel’s tear stained and bloodied face, Alexis stared at the man-beasts surrounding her. It was almost scary—how man-like they appeared.
How, she wondered? How could this be? How could something like this come about in the little time since they’d left Earth?
Unless it had been longer?
Or they hadn’t come to Earth at all?
No. That couldn’t be the case, she realized. They’d emerged in mission control. She’d recognized it.
Had their theories of the time been wrong, then?
That didn’t seem possible either. Evolution like this would take thousands of years and she didn’t believe anything would’ve been left of the space center if that was the case.
She looked down at the arm spanning her waist.
It looked like a man’s arm and man’s hand—furred, but not misshapen, not almost like a man’s arm and hand. Just like a man’s.
The faces were another matter. The shape of their faces wasn’t entirely human, close, but still more beast-like.
What beast escaped her. They were too close to human to bear traits from their animal half distinct enough to positively identify. The farm workers had been easy to identify. Despite the fact that they walked upright, despite the fact that they were roughly humanoid and nearly as big as an average human, their faces were easily distinguishable as cat-like, or dog-like once they’d come close enough for her to see them clearly. They’d only appeared human in the distance because of their occupation and the fact that they’d walked upright, not on all fours. She recalled, too, that they had been mal-formed, more like caricatures of animals twisted into the general shape of human beings.
These beings seemed closer to human.
Why? What might cause such a drastic evolution of what had once been animals? And why some more than others?
The one carrying her pulled into the lead as they topped a slight rise along the hard packed ribbon of dirt they’d been following, drawing her from her thoughts.
Before them, she saw a fortress built of stone and in a manner that had not been built on Earth for many centuries before they had left Earth.
The shrill blare of horns of some sort sounded in the distance and as she watched, the thick wooden gates set in the stone walls began to open like some great maw of a beast.
Her heart quickened, though it had barely steadied at all. She tensed all over as the urge overcame her to fling herself from the beast they were riding and run. Her captor’s arm tightened on her waist. “Don’t even think it,” he murmured in a rumbling growl that sent shivers down her spine.
She thought for a moment she might throw up.
English? They spoke English?
This was not evolution, she realized in horror. She didn’t know what would account for what had happened here, but there was no possibility, at all, that language would not also have evolved past recognition in the time it would’ve taken them to evolve naturally or, contrarily, that these creatures would just ‘happen’ to develop the same language as humans had.
The man-beast holding her dismounted in the bailey and dragged her from the saddle. Mel commenced to screaming and struggling. Alexis might have screamed, as well, might have tried to fight her captor despite the futility of such an attempt, except that she couldn’t find her voice and she was so weak with fright it took an effort even to stand. She was almost relieved when they were hauled inside and down a steep, winding stair and finally shoved into a dank, dim cell.
Almost.
As she righted herself, a pair of gleaming, golden eyes in the deep shadows at the back of the cell caught and held her gaze.
“We’ve brought you company, halfling,” the guard who shoved her inside announced with a guttural laugh as he slammed the door shut behind her and locked it.
Mel, apparently too hoarse from screaming to do so again, uttered a squawking noise when she caught sight of the glowing eyes. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she slowly wilted to the floor. Alexis’ gaze flickered to Mel in consternation and then returned to the glowing eyes.
Her heart leapt into her throat and tried to choke her as she realized the eyes were drifting closer and a hulking shape began to emerge slowly from the darkness.
* * * *
Torin’s first thought when he caught the rhythmic sounds he finally identified as the march of feet was that, as careful as he thought he’d been, they’d heard him when he’d broken through. They only brought food for him once a day, and he’d eaten. Besides, he could tell it was far more than the single guard who generally brought his food tramping down the steep stairs that led to his dungeon cell.
They were definitely coming toward him, however.
Gritting his teeth, he quickly replaced the stones in the opening, scrambled out from under the bunk, and dropped onto it. Dragging in a deep breath and holding it a moment, he willed his heart to slow. The bear didn’t have the acute senses of his own people. It was highly unlikely, he thought, that they would hear the rapid breaths and heartbeat that would alert them to his tension and make them wonder at the reason for it, but there was no sense in taking the chance that they would. Or, if they did, that they might realize it had nothing to do with their unexpected visit and everything to do with his plans to escape.
He completely forgot why he was so intent on convincing them it was lethargy that had him sprawled upon his bunk, though, when they shoved the women into his cell and slammed the cell door again.
He barely even registered the fact that their were two women.
His gaze settled on the smaller of the two the moment they shoved her inside. A veritable wave of acute awareness rolled over him, and, as it slammed into him with the force of a stunning blow, everything inside of him froze to a state of watchful stillness. Everything beyond his focus upon her ceased to exist as the hunter within him surged to the forefront.
His brain catalogued every detail, assessed—after a fashion—but his perceptions had sent any true thought processes reeling. Human, his mind clicked, enemy, and then it discarded the warnings. Soft, vulnerable, frightened, his senses registered absently.
Beautiful, womanly—unprotected—his for the taking.
Hunger surged inside of him, thirst, want.
He slipped quietly and slowly from the bunk, yielding to the hunter’s instinct to stalk without even any consciousness of it. Later, when he could think, he wasn’t entirely certain what had drawn him. He’d felt a need to move closer even though he drank in everything about her from where he was—the soft, pale hair that fell in waves past her shoulders and framed that small, oval—human—face that he should not have found the least appealing but did—the soft swell of her breasts that thrust against her clothing with her rapid breaths, the appealing curve of waist and hip and thigh—the scent of her.