house. Emergency vehicles? Had someone reported the attack? I couldn’t see the vehicles from my vantage, and I didn’t want to step into the room with the open floor for a better look. By no means did I trust the ship yet. For all I knew, this was yet another elaborate test.
What kind of test might I be participating in now? Perhaps it wanted to know what I would do if given one chance at them. I wondered if I had chosen badly. Maybe, I should have demanded that the aliens show themselves and commit suicide at my feet. When they revived my children-or didn’t-I decided I would indulge myself with such commands.
I wondered if there were police down there. I knew a deputy lived nearby. Perhaps he’d heard my shotgun go off and had made the call. If Deputy Dave Mitters was down there, I had to wonder what he thought of my spaceship. We’d had a few beers and football games between us.
The answer came as the hand snaked down and fished about. Popping sounds rang out.
“Don’t shoot my kids you moron, Dave,” I muttered aloud. But I pulled back a step from the opening. If he was firing up into the ship, I didn’t want him to get lucky.
Suddenly, a brilliant flare lit up beneath the ship. Blinding green light filled my vision, like a silent explosion. My eyes snapped themselves shut, but it was too late. Purple, splotchy after-images danced on my retina. When I opened one eye back up, blinking and putting my hands to my face, the intense green glare flashed into existence again. But this time I was ready with my arm shielding my aching eyes.
The sounds of gunfire were gone now, replaced by silence. Not even the crickets in the fields were chirruping anymore. From the opening, where the arm reached out of my new world of moving liquid metals down into my old world of rippling fields, a wash of heat came up into the ship. With the hot air came a smell, a smell of ozone and burnt things. Quickly, this hot smell was replaced by a gush of black smoke. What had happened down there? I had to think the ship had returned fire. Automatically, I supposed.
Had it burned down Dave Mitters? I worried about it, thinking perhaps I had inadvertently caused more death by telling my ship to return to my farm. I remembered that I had fired on the ship myself, and it hadn’t burnt me down then. Maybe the rules had changed, now that I had made it to the bridge.
The snake-arm retracted back into the ship. It retracted faster as it reached the end. There, in the grip of the thing, was an ambulance gurney. My mouth sagged open. A sheet covered the face, but by the shape of the body I figured it must be Kristine. Black ash speckled the white sheet over her face. Seeing her body like that brought a wave of grief that was physically painful. It was as if I’d been punched in the gut. I felt sickened. The ship’s arm slid away into the side room, the one with all the tables and smaller snake-arms. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see what was going on in there with Sandra. I didn’t want to see her beautiful body being dissected.
I put my hands on my knees and almost heaved up whatever was in my stomach. I had to struggle to keep control. The huge arm dipped down again. I took several steps, crossing the room and leaning against the cold wall of the bridge, which I now believed this room to be. The arm was down there, snaking around my farm. Soon, it would come back up with Jake’s body, I knew. I didn’t want to see him as a dead thing. Not again.
It was very quiet down there. The initial gush of smoke and heat had ebbed, leaving a lurid flickering light. Something was on fire. I hoped it wasn’t my house. I hoped it wasn’t Dave Mitters. Soon the arm did as I thought it would, gliding back into the ship with a burden. It slipped into the medical bay, or dissection room, or whatever it was, and vanished. I put my cheek against the cold wall of the ship and tried not to think of Jake or Kristine or Dave Mitters. I tried not to think of anything.
I failed to stop my mind from racing, however. What if the ship revived the kids, but as brain-damaged vegetables? Would I have to watch them grow up in a coma? Or, what if the ship never let any of us go? What if we were to be its prisoners, perhaps to be tested by pitting us in death fights on other worlds?
What if I had only magnified the horror of the situation by bringing my own children back into it?
5
“Retrieval process complete.”
“You-you are ready for new instructions?” I asked hesitantly.
“Ready,” said the ship.
I looked around with wide eyes. That voice never seemed to emanate from any one spot. I’d never seen a speaker. The sound came from the very walls of the ship itself, I thought. If the ship could change its walls into doors at will, then maybe it could make tiny motions in a spot on the walls, forming a vibration. Forming a speaker and pronouncing words. Very strange technology.
I reflected that if I was allowed to give the ship a new order, then this test was either much longer and more complex than any of the others, or it was not a test at all. Perhaps, I had truly been given command of this ship. But why?
I decided, at long last, to ask some questions. There was one I had to ask.
“I command you to answer my questions. How are the revivals going? Are my children going to survive?”
“Unknown. The injections have been administered.”
I thought about that. What injections? I decided the ship’s answer was good enough for now. I would find out the rest when the job was done. The fact the ship had said unknown concerned me, however. The outcome was in doubt. I shook my head and rubbed my temples.
“Ship-what should I call you?”
“How do you wish to address us?”
I thought of a dozen expletives. Asshole came to mind, for example. For the first time since I’d awakened, a grim smile twitched on my face and quickly died.
“I’m going to name you Alamo,” I said, “because I intend to never forget you.”
“Rename complete.”
I snorted. “Okay Alamo, let’s try something easy. Turn on a view screen or something so I can see what’s going on below us.”
A portal melted in the middle of the bridge floor. It was circular and perhaps ten feet in diameter. The second it began to open, the air in the room began screaming out of it. A fantastic wave of cold struck me. Could we be in space? Had I just killed myself?
“Close it! Close it up again!” My breath came in gasps. I was on the floor and being sucked across it toward the opening.
The hole vanished and the room rapidly repressurized. How high up were we? I didn’t think I was in open space, as I was sure we would not have survived that. Besides, I wasn’t weightless. Very high up, but still inside the atmosphere, then. Maybe miles up.
I found myself in a shivering ball on the floor of the ship. That had been a close one. I recalled my words: Turn on a view screen or something… I was certain it was that or something part which had gotten me into trouble. One did not want to be vague with this vessel. Another hard lesson learned.
“Ship?” I said.
Nothing. Then I remembered the rename.
“Alamo, respond.”
“Responding.”
“Why did you open that portal in the floor?”
“Because the commander ordered it.”
I blinked and sat up against a wall. So, I was the ship’s commander. Had those centaurs been the old commanders?
“Alamo, return to California. Maintain an altitude of one mile.”
The ship shuddered to a stop.
“Secondary mission aborted.”
“What secondary mission?”
“The acquisition of new command personnel.”
“Have you been gathering people up all along in this ship while I’ve been sitting in here?”
