Project U.L.F. (32 page)

Byron turned to rejoin the others and what he saw made him gasp. Though the others were oblivious to it, forty feet above them cradled precariously and awkwardly in the branches of a giant tree was the shuttlecraft.

CHAPTER

Mannheim removed the data chip from its operating card with difficulty. His stubby fingers found it difficult to get a grasp on the tiny component and his anxiousness added to his frustration.

The pilot’s report had been excellent. Very thorough indeed. Mannheim had viewed the flight-lieutenant’s inability to locate the target at the pre-determined rendezvous as an added bonus. One less thing for him to worry about. In fact he could have been described as pleased at the news, but his pleasure was just as rapidly seized away from him when he read that the pilot had not been able to locate the
Santa Maria
either. He had suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Now, he toyed with the chip between his fingers and stared at it as if he could extract more meaning from that information just by looking at the vessel it was carried on. Maybe if he stared long and hard enough at it, the chip would give up secrets that until now it had kept from him. Yes, the pilot’s report had covered everything, but this time everything was not enough. Where was the
Santa Maria
now, he wondered? He would speak to the man face-to-face when he returned.

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Par stood looking up at the shuttle gripped in the boughs of the massive tree. It was a black mass, silhouetted by the sun which climbed sluggishly into the sky behind it. The harsh light cut through the branches like knife blades, slivers of gold filled with streams of glitter as tiny particles passed through the rays and were kissed by the light. Par shielded his eyes from it and contemplated the task that awaited him this morning.

They had been forced to camp under a large tree whose lower, broad, fan-shaped branches had provided some semblance of cover. It had not been an ideal arrangement, but it was the best place they could find in the near vicinity of the shuttle. They had talked at length about what they would do with the shuttle and how they would get it out of the tree and down on the ground where it belonged. They had decided, absurd though it sounded, that if they could they would fly it. First, Par correctly informed them, someone needed to check that it was in a decent enough condition that it could be flown. The others had all stopped and looked at him. “That’ll be me, then,” he had concluded. Now as he stood there and looked at the shuttle he wished that he had kept his mouth shut.

“Got that line for you.” Wyatt came up alongside him and held out a coil of rope.

“Thanks, I’m sure,” Par said, looking closely at the crudely fashioned grappling hook on its end. He recognized the trap components fashioned now into the three-pronged hook. “Is that going to hold my weight?” He gave it a long and suspicious stare.

“Can’t say,” Wyatt said. “But it should do,” he added with a smile.

“Great.” Par said, sarcasm playing traitor to his feigned enthusiasm.

“Just one thing before you go,” Wyatt stopped him. “If she feels like she’s going to give, just jump clear. We can fix a broken bone. We can’t help you if you’re a shish-kebab.”

“Sound advice indeed. Thanks, I’ll remember that.” Par turned away from him and returned his attention to the shuttle. “Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“Be careful,” Wyatt cautioned him.

“Yeah,” Par was nonchalant, already walking away from him. Already resigned to what might happen.

He stopped almost directly underneath the shuttle’s position and glanced up into the tree to get another look at it before turning to look back at the others. They all gave him encouraging nods of their heads. He turned away from them and returned his gaze to the shuttle. “Well,” he sighed quietly, “Here goes nothing.” Dropping the coil of rope to the ground, he maintained his grasp on a short length of it in his left hand and began to swing the hook around with his right. Slowly, the action became faster until the rope whoomp-whoomped as it cut its path rapidly through the air. Then he quickly let the hook go, and sent it upward through the tree on a trajectory he hoped would end with the sound of metal on metal. He was successful the first time. The hook sailed above and over the top of the shuttle and landed with a clang, but the weight of the trailing rope pulled it back and it failed to catch on anything. Par stood looking up, mesmerized, as the slack rope tightened and then the hook on its end appeared over the top of the shuttle and began to fall towards him. Surprised and spurred into action, he only just managed to move out of the way before the grapple fell to the earth with a thud. He gave the others a skeptical look. “I’ll try that again, shall I?”

The second time the hook caught and Par yanked on it to make sure it was secure before testing his whole weight on the rope, all the while keeping a wary eye on the shuttle in case his added weight would upset its balance and bring the whole thing crashing down to earth. “Okay, we’re in business.”

Slowly. Ever so slowly, Par crept up the rope. Much as he wanted to make less work for himself, he could not climb as rapidly as he would have wished. Any sudden movement might just be enough to bring the shuttle down, and if that happened they might as well forget going home. In his concentration he would sometimes forget to breathe, and on the ground below him, the others were holding their breaths too. Waiting. Hoping.

The climb was agonizingly slow and when Par reached one of the branches on which the shuttle rested, the first thing he did was rub the burning ache out of his biceps. Then he sat there for a moment and surveyed the silver-gray bulk in front of him, contemplating the best way to the shuttle door. Carefully, he picked his way the short distance along the thick branch to the front of the ship. He could see that aside from the bough that he stood on, the shuttle was supported by two other branches, one of a similar thickness, higher, and towards the rear of the ship and another, smaller limb between the two which obviously could not adequately support the massive weight bearing down upon it. The shuttle was upright but tipped slightly away from him because of the upward growth of the branches, and it rested on two skids, nose tipped down towards the ground an unsettling distance below. Par guessed that if the other side of the shuttle had not come to rest against the thick trunk then the craft would have simply slid off the cradling branches and gone crashing to the ground below.

The only way to the door was to side-step along the skid which flanked the ship like a sled runner. Par tentatively stepped onto it and stood there a while to see if he could feel any motion from the shuttle. Apart from small movements of the branches, the shuttle seemed secure. He leaned forwards and put his palms flat against the side of the ship. Slowly, he began to shuffle his way towards the rear of the craft, making a conscious effort not to look down.

He passed the door and located the exterior release latch, a semicircle of metal, flush with the metal paneling, which he lifted to form a handle, twisted, and then pulled. The door panel of the ship popped clear and there was a sigh as the warm air inside the shuttle escaped through the small gap, almost like the ship itself had exhaled. Par backtracked a little and then pushed the door clear, back and away on a sliding rail. He found what he expected, but the sight still shocked him. The crew were all strapped in their seats, motionless. Lifeless.

Carefully, Par clambered into the ship, all the while remaining alert to any sense of motion. When he reached the first man, Par lifted the drooping head and pushed back the visor on the helmet. The man’s pale gray skin confirmed that he was dead, but it was not the fact that he was dead which disturbed Par. It was the look in the glazed eyes which stared right through him. There was a fear there, a frozen stare of terror which suggested something was dreadfully amiss. It was a secret that the man had taken with him to his grave and, Par realized, standing here contemplating what that might be was wasting them time. He let the visor and the man’s head drop.

He straightened and took a quick look around. Hatches were open and the supplies that had spilled out of them had collected in a pile near the cockpit, sliding down across the sloping floor until they had finally come to rest. It was clear, even from the inside, that the hull had been seriously damaged where it had struck the trunk of the tree. They had obviously hit it with a great amount of force. Par frowned. None of this made sense. The maxi-shuttles were vertical take off and landing craft, designed that way so they could land in small clearings. The shuttle, if it had crashed while launching, should have been ascending in a controlled hover. It would not have been traveling at any great speed in a forward or sideways direction—certainly not fast enough to incur that amount of damage. The scorched marks on the earth indicated that the shuttle had fired its solid fuel rockets for a vertical trajectory. It just did not make sense. Par gave the interior of the hull a cursory glance, thinking in his mind what the worse case scenario might be. While there appeared to be no breach of the hull from a visual inspection, that was no guarantee that the hull’s integrity had not been compromised.

He picked his way through the seats, past the other bodies all slumped in a similar fashion to the first, and forced back the automatic door which separated the crew from the pilots. The door was ajar, which suggested an electronics malfunction, but Par could not believe such a thing could be responsible for the crash and the damage he had seen. With a grunt he pushed the last few inches of the door aside and then suddenly felt very queasy as he looked into the cockpit and through the windows to the branches and the ground below. Inside, it had been very easy to forget that he was teetering forty feet up in a tree. Both pilots were also dead. From where he stood, Par could see that the man to his right had a smashed visor; the shattered glass was tinted crimson with dried blood. The co-pilot to his left, despite being hunched over in his chair, his safety harness stopping him from falling any further forward, maintained a viselike grip on the control in front of him.

They had been hit by something, Par guessed. Something that had killed the pilot outright and forced the co-pilot to try and take control of the shuttle. An attempt in which he had failed. They had smashed into the tree and those that had not been killed by the impact had sustained such massive internal injuries that they were unable to help themselves. If they had survived the crash then they had died of their injuries or starved to death in their seats or both. It was an unpleasant scenario but the only one he could think of to explain what he had seen.

He scanned the control panel in front of him. The radio! Maybe the radio was still functional. Even if the ship was not fit for space flight they could still radio for help. His eyes frantically skimmed across the buttons in front of him. It should be on the main panel, he told himself. Yes! There! Grasping the back of one of the pilots’ seats he leaned forward with an outstretched hand to flick the switch and at the same time, from somewhere near the back of the ship came a metallic creak. He was upsetting the balance of the shuttle. He tried again and again the noise came. Panic gripped his mind. If the ship fell now, then there was no way he would get to the door in time to jump clear. What was he to do? If he didn’t try the radio and the ship fell they were all doomed. If he did and the ship then fell then he would almost certainly be killed but at least the others would stand a chance of being rescued. He could just leave it, of course, but who knew what his exploration might have done? Those creaks might have been the start of the end as far as the shuttle was concerned. Did they have the luxury of time? He doubted it. In an instant of blind heroism he leaned that extra bit further, trying to ignore the warning sounds that the shuttle made in protest. He flicked the switch and sparks flew, sending a wisp of blue smoke spiraling into the air and forcing him to retract quickly. He stood there motionless, his mind racing as he tried to comprehend what had happened and at the same time listen for the grating metal sound that would signify impending doom. It never came, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive, for the moment, at least, but the radio was dead.

He turned from the cockpit and literally climbed his way back through the seats in the main cabin, past where he had entered, and to the back of the craft. The last two seats were empty, which puzzled him even more. He had never known a CSETI mission craft to not have a full complement of crew. He reached the storage hatches at the back of the cabin and opened one. In hindsight, a very bad idea. A number of food sachets and cans poured out on him and fell, banging and clattering through the cabin to join the others already on the floor. Quickly, but with difficulty, he managed to close and secure the hatch once more.

Par returned to the shuttle door to report his findings to the expectant faces below.