Chapter 8
Heather staggered to her feet, her brow wet with a cold, stinging sweat that dripped into her eyes.
Mark cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled. “Jennifer! Hey, Sis, can you hear me?”
Heather joined the yelling, fear clutching at her heart. Suddenly, the doorway leading out of the room snicked open. Framed against a multicolored backdrop, Jennifer smiled calmly at them, her alien headband still firmly in place, its coloring now a shifting rainbow pattern that made Heather a bit dizzy looking at it.
“Jen! Get that damned thing off your head. It nearly killed Mark and I.”
“Relax. It didn’t try to kill us.”
Mark shook his head. “It may not have tried, but it came damn close to doing it. I thought my head was going to explode.”
Jennifer stepped into the room, the doorway sliding closed behind her. “It scared me too. But once the download started, I sort of got the hang of it.”
“Download? What the hell are you talking about?” Mark asked.
“Well, it just came to me. All that imagery and strange symbology. You saw that too, right? Well it seemed like a link to the central computer system, so I focused on visualizing questions. That caused me to get new imagery back, most of it incomprehensible. But I managed to open the door.”
Heather glanced down at the floor where her own headset lay. “Then why did it hurt so bad?”
Mark nodded. “I’ll tell you why. The damned thing puts off so many microwaves that it cooked part of our brains.”
“No. I don’t think so,” Jennifer said. “I think the aliens used the bands to communicate with the ship's computers. Instead of keyboards and monitors, they put these on and their thoughts were tied in to the system. The computer ‘talked’ back with images, sounds, maybe even feelings.”
Heather nodded. “That makes sense. We haven’t seen anything resembling manual input devices to the onboard systems. No keyboards, joysticks, mice, nothing.”
Mark scowled. “What’s the point of a system that fries your brain in the process?”
“Maybe it didn’t hurt the aliens,” Heather said. “I’ll bet the connections to our brains are different than the aliens’. Maybe the computer had to explore its way around our heads to figure out how to link up.”
“And so it has. Now put your headsets back on and follow me. I want to show you something,” Jennifer said.
Heather hesitated. “I don’t really want to go through that again.”
Mark took a deep breath, then placed the band back on his head. After several seconds he looked over at Heather. “It’s okay. No pain this time.”
Heather stooped to pick up her own small band. Sliding it into place, Heather focused on the doorway, which cooperated by sliding open. “Interesting. One other thing before we proceed,” Heather continued. “Did anyone else see imagery of the ship crashing?”
“Sure did,” said Mark as Jennifer nodded in agreement.
“Maybe the computer automatically gives a dump of the last entries in the ship’s log whenever it detects a new user,” Jennifer ventured.
“Hard to say,” said Heather.
Mark headed toward the door. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s take a look around.”
Heather would rather have taken a bit of time to analyze the amazing amount of information that had already presented itself before going a further. Certainly the computer link theory cried out for investigation. Still, Jennifer had already been inside the next room and Mark was not about to be slowed down, so her theoretical musings would have to wait.
While not as spacious as the room below, this one bled beauty. It reminded Heather of the Museum of Modern Art at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Abstract table shapes, as though blown from a glass blower’s pipe, grew from the floor, still pulsing with the colors of the melting flame.
Several of the tall slender shapes pulsed in rhythm with their own heartbeats, each alive with cascading colors.
Heather touched one of the structures rising from a single pedestal, the feel as soft and smooth as baby oil. As the pressure of her hand increased, the material molded itself to match the shape. No doubt if she lay atop the thing, it would cradle her body in complete comfort.
“What do you think? Medical Lab?” she asked.
Jennifer paused in her examination of one of the delicately curved, lamp-like objects. “Some of these are definitely responding to our body readings, but who knows? I tried to focus a question about this thing, but all I get is a sequence of the strange symbols, some warbling sounds, and imagery of the light patterns shifting. I don’t have enough information to make any sense out of it.”
Mark walked over to a doorway into the wall opposite of that where they had entered. Standing before it, he concentrated for several moments. Nothing happened.
“Hmm. Hey, Heather. See if you can get this one to open.”
Heather moved up beside him and pictured the doorway open. A sequence of three-dimensional symbols floated across her vision, so real that she actually reached out to touch one of the iridescent shapes, her hand passing through the space where it appeared without feeling anything. The door remained closed.
“That’s odd.”
Jennifer joined them, having no more success than either of them had enjoyed. “There must be some security code that allows access to this area.”
Mark shrugged. “Or it’s broken. Either way it doesn’t look like we’re getting in there today.”
Heather’s head shot up. Today. What time was it anyway? The question brought a cascade of symbolic imagery into her head until she reached up and pulled off the headset.
“Mark. What time do you have?”
Mark glanced down at his sports watch. “Two thirty-eight.”
Heather began striding toward the exit. “Oh my God. I promised Mom I’d be home by three. I’m already late.”
Jennifer and Mark both followed her, returning their headsets to where they found them.
Together they made their way out of the ship, retrieved the small model plane, including the small piece broken off the right wing, and passed out through the holographic veil that hid the cave entrance. Then, blazing a trail back through the thorn brush, they made their way up the ridge to where they had left their bikes.
By the time they repacked their equipment and completed the ride back to their houses, four o’clock had come and gone. Agreeing amongst themselves not to divulge any of what they had discovered that day, at least until they had taken time to discuss all possible consequences, they parted.
Heather opened her garage, lifting her bike to the twin hooks hanging from the ceiling. Then, after a brief pause to collect her thoughts, she stepped through the door. She had reason to fret. Just inside the foyer stood her mother, arms crossed, eyebrows arched, awaiting an explanation better than she expected to receive.
“Mom, I’m so sorry. We were flying Mark’s new model airplane out on the mesa when a wind gust crashed it into the canyon. By the time we found it I was already late. I rushed back as fast as I could.”
Her mother’s expression showed this explanation was about what she had anticipated, something less than satisfactory.
“Heather, I know how important time with your friends is, but family time is important too. We agreed on three o’clock so we could meet your father for an afternoon matinee before dinner. Since he has to work tomorrow, he took off early to meet us. Do you think it’s fair to make him wait like that?”
Heather’s head dropped. “No, Mom. I’m sorry.”
Her mother sighed, then draped an arm around Heather’s shoulder, making her feel even worse. “I know you are. Let me call Dad and tell him you’ve shown up. Maybe we can make the five o’clock showing.”
“Mom, before we go, have you got any aspirin?”
“Sure. What’s the matter? Did you hurt yourself?” She raked her eyes over Heather’s frame with sudden intensity.
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just have a bit of a headache that I’d like to get rid of before the movie starts.”
“You probably haven’t been drinking enough water today. Grab a bottle from the refrigerator and meet me in the car. I have some aspirin in my purse.”
Despite the water and the aspirin, Heather’s headache intensified throughout the movie and dinner, although she was unwilling to mention it again lest she spoil what was left of her parents' day. After dinner, Heather stumbled to her room, crawling into her bed still fully clothed.
With pain hammering at her skull, she drifted off to a dreamland where alien species fought across the galaxy, world after world succumbing to harsh masters. And while her dreams identified no single alien race, each planetary war was preceded by a common event: the arrival of a lone cigar-shaped ship.