THIRTEEN
The following day we reconvened at the Mantis.
Hawk lay in the suspension cradle which hung from the ceiling of the control room. Leads snaked up from his wrists, spine and head—not jacked into his ports, but fastened to his skin by adhesive pads. These would interface with his neural pathways and allow him to fly the ship.
A screen hung before his eyes, scrolling figures only he could understand.
He glanced at us as we stood around him. “Just like the old days,”he said. “Well, almost.”
I noticed the beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, and the fear in his eyes.
“Are you sure you can fly this thing?” Matt said.
Hawk nodded, reading from the screen. “In principle it’s the same as every other crate I’ve flown. It’s just that some of the ways of doing things are a little different.” He smiled at us. “Hey, have faith. I’ll get us to where we’re going, and back.”
Maddie looked at me. “But you don’t know where we’re heading,”she said.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Is that voice in your head to be trusted?”
“I trusted it when it told me to dive in and save you,” I said,
“when it said that I had nothing to fear, and had to atone for past failings. Don’t worry, whatever it is… it’s humane.” I smiled at using such a term to describe something so alien.
Matt said, “So… what now?”
I indicated the four recesses, two on either side of the viewscreen, which Hawk had discovered the other day. Now, thanks to the guiding voice in my head, I knew what they were for.
“We stand in these for a minute, fully dressed. We’re coated with a… a protective barrier, I suppose you could call it.”
Matt asked, “Protective from what?”
I was forced to admit my ignorance. “I don’t know. It’s a vital part of the process.”
I took the lead and stepped into the alien-shaped recess, which accommodated my form with room to spare. After a brief hesitation, Matt and Maddie stepped into their own recesses. I heard a hiss all around me, felt a sebaceous tickle run over my skin. Within seconds the fluid had impregnated my clothing and I felt the oily layer coating me from head to foot.
I stepped back into the room. Matt quit his recess and touched the film between his fingers. He looked at me. “Strange. And you’ve no idea what it’s for?”
“I think we’ll soon find out,” I said. Maddie said, “And now?”
I pointed to the couches which, when Hawk had laid himself out in the suspension cradle, had ejected themselves from the floor. “We strap ourselves in. The ship does the rest.”
Again I took the lead, to show my friends that they had nothing to fear. I stretched out on the couch next to Hawk’s cradle, fastening the straps around my legs and torso. Seconds later something dropped from the ceiling, startling me. I stared up at the tiny glass bulb at the end of the sectioned, multi-jointed arm that bobbed inches from my forehead. I received the impression that it was examining me.
A beam of light lanced out, and I gasped. I was aware of Matt and
Maddie, watching with something like shock pasted onto their faces.
The light felt… soothing. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
I felt something energise within me, as if some latent force within my head had been unlocked. The beam persisted, connecting me to something in the ship that would draw power from my being.
Matt and Maddie lay down on their couches, and seconds later they too were connected.
Then the couches tipped as one, inclining forward so that we were sitting up and staring through the viewscreen.
I thought of the alien space-farers who had lain here before us, of the stars they had beheld on their voyages through the galaxy.
Where are we going, I asked the thing in my head, for perhaps the hundredth time. The alien deigned not to reply, but I knew it was there. “We’re powering up,” Hawk reported from his cradle. “Take-off in three minutes and counting…”
I was aware of a slight vibration that conducted itself through the Mantis, an almost subliminal hum at first, but mounting. Seconds later the ship shook, rattling us in our couches. I looked through the viewscreen and saw the scene of sea and foreshore yaw alarmingly. It see-sawed as the ship lifted with a groan of engines; the beach vanished beneath us, to be replaced with a view of the open sea.
Then the Mantis turned, pointing inland.
Hawk said, “Hold on—!”
And we accelerated.
An invisible force punched us back into the couches, almost robbing us of breath. I gripped the side of the couch as the ship underwent a high-pitched vibration; panels squealed as they took the strain, anything which I hadn’t removed in preparation fell to the floor and rolled across the deck.
Through the viewscreen I saw the magnificent interior, the plains of green and in the distance the rearing central mountains. We accelerated towards them so fast that they seemed to magnify alarmingly, like an image in a suddenly refocused telescope.
Maddie, beside me, her teeth chattering, managed, “Why on earth did I agree to this torture?”
I said, “Relax. Don’t fight it. Ride with it.”
“Mach one and climbing,” Hawk reported. “Mach two… three…”
Matt said, “Where are you taking us, Hawk?”
A muted laugh from the suspension cradle. “I’m taking you nowhere, Matt. This thing’s pre-programmed. I’m just easing it along, stroking it when it needs stroking, equalising the energy levels…”
I glanced across at him. The fear was gone from his eyes, to be replaced with something close to joy.
We gained altitude. Through a sidescreen I could see the land passing beneath us, made impossibly miniature by our elevation. Islands of cloud drifted by far below, and between them I made out beetling cars, tractors in fields, citizens going about their daily business oblivious of our history-making flight.
“Mach five and rising…”
I stared ahead through the main viewscreen. The central mountains were looming, and seconds later we were flying over their peaks. I stared down at the high fissures and folds, where snow still lay in long sweeps and curves like Arabic script. I made out the winding pass which we had taken the other day.
We sped over the mountain range and lost height, hugging the sweep of the foothills. Ahead was the central plain, stretching out to the hazy, curling horizon.
And in the centre of the plain, standing like some vast essential pinion or spindle, was the Golden Column.
We exchanged silent glances as we raced towards the Column.
I asked the presence in my head, which I knew was there despite its silence, if our destination was indeed the Golden Column. But of course there was no reply.
We lost altitude, skimming along the surface of the plain at a height of metres. Down below, I saw vehicles veer off the road and their passengers climb out to observe our passage.
It would be, I thought, the first time that many of them had set eyes on a real live, honest-to-goodness starship.
Maddie said, “Good God…” Matt smiled to himself as he stared ahead.
Hawk said, “This is it.”
We raced towards the Golden Column; it expanded to fill the screen, radiating illumination like a gold ingot in a spotlight. Below, thousands of pilgrims looked up as one, the phasing sweep of their suddenly upturning faces like the wind ruffling a field of wheat. Then another wave passed through their ranks as they fell to the ground—whether in some base obeisance or stark fear, I was unable to tell.
Just as I thought we were about to crash straight into the Golden
Column, we slowed.
Matt said, “Did you do that, Hawk?”
Our pilot shook his head. “Not me, pal.”
All we could see now through the screen was the effulgent light of the Column, and we had come to a stop before it and were hovering.
Maddie whispered, “What now?”
Everyone looked at me, and I said, “I don’t know.”
“We wait,” Hawk said. “Maybe the Column will communicate with us.”
“Offer up some universal truth,” Matt continued. Maddie said, “Change, reveal to us its purpose.”
A deep thrum sounded, and I felt myself connected to the ship, energy flowing through me in an exultant wave.
It was evidently happening to the others, too. Maddie cried out in surprise and Matt said, “Hawk?”
Hawk laughed, a little hysterically. “It’s called latent energising,” he shouted back at us through the mounting whine of the engine. “The piles are accumulating.”
“What does it mean?” Maddie yelled. I looked across at Hawk. Tears were leaking from his eyes. “I never told you about what happened on the Nevada run, did I, David?”
Maddie shouted, “But what’s happening now, for chrissake!”
“I miscalculated a jump,” Hawk told me, ignoring her. “I was solo, with a hundred passengers. The accumulator was out of kilter, but like a fool I thought I could compensate. I made the jump, and we came out of void space on the other side with half the ship breached, the other half compacted. Only five of us survived.”
“Hawk,” I said, and I wondered if I was commiserating with him, or attempting to refocus his attention on what was happening now.
The thrust increased. We were plastered to the couches. I couldn’t move a muscle. Even words, now, were beyond me. Every breath was a gargantuan labour.
Maddie cried out. I saw her concern: the light which hung above us, penetrating our frontal lobes, intensified, brightened, became painful.
I wondered, then, what trap I had lured my friends into. Hawk yelled, “This is it!”
It was as if the pent up pressure in the Mantis, which had been building for minutes, was suddenly released and we sprang forward at terrible speed—forward into the blinding intensity of the Golden Column.
I cried out, instinctively trying to raise my arms to protect myself from the impact I knew was about to happen.
But the impact never came.
When I opened my eyes, I saw only gold, and my body, my very being, was suffused by such a warmth and sense of well-being that I found it hard to fight back the tears.
“What happened?” Maddie said in a tremulous voice.
Matt responded, hushed with awe. “We’re inside the Golden Column…”
I looked though the sidescreens, the rear screen. All around us was gold.