Fugitive From Asteron Read online

  “If you can get me off auto-flight, I will head for solid ground and attempt to land before the ship crashes into the sea. That way I can save your cargo. What is your password to disengage auto-flight?”

  He paused, suspicious. “Flight control will tell you what is necessary for you to know and nothing more.”

  “It is too late anyway. The fire is out of control.”

  “What is this fire, and where is it?”

  I did not reply.

  “You have three orders, you miserable swine: You must not let the cargo sink into the sea. You must not let it catch fire. And you must not let it crash.”

  “Maybe you should order the fire not to burn.”

  “Go back to the ship and put the cargo in the camper to protect it!”

  “What exactly is this cargo, Feran? What is it you are asking me to place in a safe container while I go back into the flames?”

  “It is something that is mine and that you had no right to take. Do you understand that?”

  “Fully. There was something that was mine and that you had no right to take. No right at all!” I did not recognize the savage cry that was my voice. “For that, I will watch your cargo sink to the bottom of the sea!”

  “Shut up! You have no idea what you are saying. You must save Asteron!”

  “What is this cargo? How will it save Asteron?”

  “Get to the deck for your commands.”

  “There is no time to save my ship. Oh, I mean your ship, Feran.”

  He moaned in fury and frustration. “You must save the ship! I command it!”

  “I am too weak to save the ship, Feran. My rations of animal feed have not fortified me enough for my journey. I will eject in the camper and save myself.”

  “The camper does not have engines for a power landing on the planet. It could break up on impact. Your despicable traitor bones are safer if you follow flight control’s orders and save the ship.”

  “I will follow my own orders and take my chances.”

  I shut down the communicator and jumped out of the camper. Then I sealed the airlock behind me and returned to the flight deck. I figured that if Feran found evidence of the camper in the sea, it would lend credence to my story about the fire and make him think that the mother ship and cargo also crashed there. So I ejected the device. From my window I watched it fall. My ruse, I hoped, would stall him.

  I harnessed myself into the captain’s seat, waiting for the autopilot to disengage. Why was I not dead yet? Where were the missiles from the alien planet? Did it not protect itself from alien spacecraft entering its territory? If this were Asteron, I would have already been tracked. And why had no alien tried to reach me by radio?

  The fuel indicator was approaching empty. When the autopilot disengaged, I would not have enough fuel to fly any significant distance from Feran’s destination. My fingers moved restlessly over the stick, waiting for it to respond.

  I was now flying up the coastline of what appeared to be an ocean, with waves breaking on the beach. The shoreline glimmered with the lights of cities and with roads flowing into and out of them like arteries. I was descending rapidly now, flying above one cluster of lights, then over an area with more scattered lighting. My craft was set to land near the coast, in a less-populated region on the outskirts of a city.

  With the glow from the lights below adding to the moonlight, I could see objects. I spotted an expansive wooded field that appeared to be deserted. It had areas that were sufficiently open for a vertical landing of my ship, yet surrounded by thickets of trees and shrubs for concealment. This was where I would touch down if I got the chance to maneuver. Just when I had given up hope of exerting any control over where I would land, the computer announced that auto-flight was disengaging.

  Suddenly, the stick came alive in my hand! I quickly turned the ship and headed straight for the field behind me. Just to be safe, I turned off a sensor that transmitted the craft’s location, although I did not think it was operable outside of the home planet’s satellite network.

  I maneuvered the ship over what I judged to be the optimum place in the field for a landing. For a few tense seconds the craft bumped and scraped against the foliage as I brought it down. It hit the ground with a thump. I cautiously moved my neck and limbs, and then I checked the flight deck. My body and the ship seemed intact.

  I observed my new planet from the windows. The shrubbery brushing against my craft seemed astonishingly similar to that on Asteron, as if someone had transplanted the vegetation from one place to the other. An instrument onboard registered a benign atmosphere containing oxygen, so I carefully opened the hatch and took a breath. Warm air, scented with sea and grass, filled my lungs. I saw no need for the curious purple suit in the cargo bay because the fresh air felt remarkably similar to that on Asteron.

  To my great relief, no one seemed to be waiting. My arrival, apparently, was of no interest to anyone. I slid down from the ship to the ground.

  Like the military craft I had flown, the ship was coated with a substance to prevent detection by thermal and infrared instruments. Nevertheless, I still had to protect the spacecraft from detection by the naked eye. Although my landing spot provided good camouflage, I gathered leafy branches from the shrubs around me and worked diligently to cover the top and any remaining exposed areas of the craft with foliage so that it would not be easily seen by anyone.

  After completing this arduous task, I sat in a nearby grassy area to watch fire-red spears strike a cool blue sky. Opposite the vast sea there was a mountain range, and over it the sun was rising in my new world.

  As daylight arrived, my worries subsided. I could find nothing to fear. The alien sun was not harsh but warm and nourishing. The alien winds were not severe but cool and gentle. The alien sky was clear and bright blue. The alien land was rich with trees, shrubs, and grass growing abundantly. The alien creatures, birds busy with morning rituals and little ground animals sniffing around me for food, were not frightening but harmless and engaging. My new refuge was like a potent drug that numbed my fears. I lay down on the grass with the sun flushing my face. Instead of watching for dangers, I closed my eyes for a moment of untroubled rest. Then I sprang up at the buzz of a plane’s engine. A small aircraft of the most unusual color—bright red—glistened in the sky.

  Startled, I dived into the bushes. The plane was directly overhead! It was searching for me, I feared. My heart was pounding to match the motor’s roar. What was I to do? If I tried to flee, the plane could shoot me down. If I remained where I was, it could land and deploy guards to catch me. I waited for the plane to hover, to land, to shoot, to be joined by other aircraft, but none of these things occurred. Instead, the little red ship did something most unexpected.

  It flew upright, then inverted. It rolled like a leaf tumbling in the wind. It looped to form vertical rings, then it carved a perfect figure eight, executing smooth rolls and quick spins along its path. The pilot raised the nose, climbing straight up to a point of zero airspeed, and then he began spinning in a spectacular vertical descent. At an altitude that seemed too low for recovery, he suddenly stopped the rotations, coming out of the spin in time to avoid the ground. The pilot performed these maneuvers with such balance and grace that I thought of the alien music Reevah had sung to me. I hummed the melody while I traced the aircraft’s flowing loops, rolls, and spins. The pattern of the flight matched the rhythm of the music so well that the craft seemed to be dancing through the sky.

  I realized that the plane was not looking for me or anyone else but merely for an open field over which to perform. The graceful ship seemed concerned with nothing beyond its own exciting movements. Watching it fly with ease through its skillful sequence, I remembered the time I had performed similar maneuvers in my plane, the day I was caught and . . . A sudden fear stopped my humming. Had this pilot swayed from his regimen? Would he be punished for his behavior? Would he be beaten—or meet a worse fate—for the superb patterns he traced in the air? “No
!” I cried. “No!”

  The plane began a vertical descent, a graceful red object hovering in a blue sky, slowly falling to the ground. I ran to the edge of my field, crossed a paved road, and climbed up a grassy hill to the nearby area where the plane was touching down. It landed in front of a domicile of some kind, but one that did not look large enough to house a multitude of people. I wondered about the security problems posed by its glass doors, large windows, and outdoor porches. It looked like a place too easy for inhabitants to escape.

  Concealing myself in the bushes surrounding the small building, I watched to be sure that the skillful pilot was safe. I vowed to smash anyone who would punish him. Just as the door of the small craft opened, a stout male humanoid who looked like an Asteronian approached the plane. He wore a brown uniform and carried a large shovel, its scoop raised high and ready to strike. It was a primitive weapon indeed for a commander, but one that could crush the pilot’s skull in one blow.

  The pilot emerged wearing a short, zippered jacket over pants. To my surprise, the flier’s slim lines and gracefulness in jumping to the ground were unmistakably female. She removed a hair band, and a rush of brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. In the morning sun, her hair glistened with streaks of red like burnished wood. The pilot shook her head briskly, as if to remove the tangles of her hair’s confinement. Then she smiled, an effortless gesture that seemed as buoyant as the loops of her plane. I guessed her to be a bit younger than I was.

  Was she in the military as I had been? Had she stolen the plane? I eyed the commander brandishing the shovel. He was a full head taller than the flier and about three times her weight, and his neck was of gargantuan thickness. His big steps quickly advanced him to within striking distance. Jumping out of the bushes, I lunged in front of her to face the monster that I could match in height but did in no way equal in bulk. I grabbed the shovel from his hand and gestured to the pilot. Although I did not expect aliens to understand me, my words spilled involuntarily.

  “You will not strike this female! You will not hurt her!”

  The commander raised his eyebrows.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” said the female.

  “You speak my language!” I gasped incredulously.

  “You speak ours.” She grabbed the shovel from my hands and gave it back to the commander! However, he did not move to strike either of us.

  “Now, who are you, and what do you think you’re doing, kid?” said the commander. He dug the blade of the shovel into the ground, clearly not intending to hit anyone.

  “I think I was mistaken,” I said.

  “What business do you have coming here?” the pilot asked.

  “I am lost.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Another place. Where am I now?”

  “You’re trespassing on private property,” she said.

  “What is that?”

  “My father owns this land.”

  “You know who your father is?”

  “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  I hesitated. With Feran in pursuit, I did not want to give any Asteronian name or hint of my origin. I knew only two alien names, and, although I had favored Reevah using the title, I did not want to be addressed publicly as Honey.

  The female persisted. “Well? What’s your name?”

  “Alexander. My name is Alexander.”

  “Is that your first or last name?”

  I had no reply.

  “Or do you have only one name, like some of the aliens?”

  “My name is Alexander.”

  “Why are you trying to rescue me from my gardener, Alexander?”

  “What did you say he was?”

  She gestured around us, pointing to mounds of freshly turned soil along a pathway up the hill and to two robots working the ground. The man in the brown shirt and pants was apparently the commander of a robotic grounds crew. “He’s a gardener, someone who plants flowers, Alexander.”

  “You plant flowers?”

  “Excuse us,” said the oversized alien.

  He grabbed the pilot’s arm. My fingers instinctively seized his wrist before I could stop myself.

  He gently removed my hand and then held up both of his to show he was not dangerous, and he spoke to me softly, the way one addresses a child. “Now, nobody’s going to hurt anybody. You just wait here a minute while the lady and I have a little chat.” He smiled, moving a few steps away from me with the pilot.

  I heard a smattering of words, sufficient to understand. The gardener said something about my needing medical attention. He reached for a pocket phone and uttered the word police. Knowing that word’s meaning quite well, I prepared to race down the hill and vanish from their sight forever. But the pilot stopped him, presenting a different theory about me. She thought I was an alien from Cosmona, a place from which a spacecraft apparently had just landed with refugees looking for work. Because I could not pretend to be from this bizarre new place, could not divulge I was from Asteron while Feran lurked, and did not intend to deal with the police, I thought I would encourage the pilot’s hypothesis.

  “I mean no harm,” I called to them. “I am a stranger here and unfamiliar with your customs. I am in possession of my faculties, but I know nothing of my whereabouts. I am lost, so perhaps I can ask a few questions and then leave.”

  The pilot turned to the commander of flowers. “It’s okay, Jack. I’ll handle this.”

  “If you’re sure, Kristin.” He eyed me suspiciously as they stepped toward me. “We don’t get around much to the primitive planets—no offense. So we don’t know how things work where you come from, but if you want to live here, you should know one thing.”

  He paused, still staring at me.

  “We don’t stick our noses in other people’s business.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to go, then stopped. “Oh, Kristin, I almost forgot what I was going to ask you.” He glanced at me as the cause of the interruption of his thoughts. “I was wondering how much your father wants me to trim back the shrub roses on the east border. Did he leave for work yet?”

  “He’s away on business, Jack.” I detected a touch of sadness in her voice. “He doesn’t seem to have time for the garden, so why don’t we decide?”

  “You know how particular he is about his roses. Maybe I should wait till he gets back.”

  “Lately he’s had business matters on his mind, so it’s hard to get his attention,” she said with disappointment. “I’d say to trim them down to four feet.”

  “Okay,” said the gardener.

  He glanced at me suspiciously once again, then took his shovel and walked away.

  Incredulously, I eyed dozens of trays filled with tiny blossoms sprawled along the hilly path from the street to the domicile. The short, headless robotic gardeners had rectangular bodies with various pockets to hold small tools. They seemed well suited to working the ground. Each robot’s four arms were engaged in digging holes with their trowels, lifting tiny plantings from their trays, and settling them into the ground. I breathed in the sweet scents that the wind tossed at me. A sudden aching made my mind wander to a place by a lake where a tall, delicate figure with golden curls placed a flower in her hair, a rare blossom that I had to search to find. I imagined her seeing the spectacle of color and fragrance before me, and her laughter became almost audible—

  “Alexander . . . Alexander.”

  I realized the young female named Kristin had called me several times. “Yes?”

  “I’ve got to grab breakfast.” She pointed to the curiously small quarters near us. “Then I’m going to work. If you’re just arriving from Cosmona, there’s a place a little north of here called the Center for Alien Orientation. Take the road outside my house to Evergreen Avenue, then east on Evergreen to Sanders. The center helps aliens find work here, and they put you up temporarily in housing and feed you.”

  “Is that where I am required to report?”


  “You’re not required to go there, no.”

  “But how does a person receive food and other rations?”

  She cocked her head, looking puzzled by my questions. “You buy them, so you need money.”

  “You mean they are not provided for free?”

  “Why, no.” She looked surprised by my question.

  “How do I obtain money?”

  “You take a job and get paid for your work. The Center for Aliens is run by a group of local employers. They can help you find work with their companies, or you can get a job on your own. Whatever you choose.”

  “You mean I can . . . choose . . . my work?”

  “Of course.” Kristin looked at me curiously.

  “Where am I?”

  “In Rising Tide.”

  “Where is that?”

  “It’s a city in California.”

  “Is California the name of the planet?”

  She smiled. “No. You’re on Earth. Planet Earth.”

  The name sounded familiar, but I was sure that I had learned nothing about Earth, or Cosmona, in school. I figured from my education that I was on a primitive planet where people were still in the grip of what my teachers called the idolatry of money.

  “What kind of humans live here?”

  “Earthlings.” She smiled. “By the way, you never answered my question, Alexander.”

  “What question?”

  “Why did you try to rescue me from the gardener?”

  “I saw you perform the most skillful maneuvers in your plane. I thought you had stolen it from the military, and you would be punished. I thought the gardener was a commander.”

  “Hmm, I see. I think I see. That plane doesn’t belong to the military.”

  “Who else could it belong to?”

  “It belongs to me. And as long as I’m not endangering folks—say, by practicing my aerobatics over populated areas—I can do what I want in my plane. No one can stop me—least of all the gardener.” She tried to suppress a laugh. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make fun of you.”

  “I am relieved you were not in danger.”

  “Actually, my life’s never been in danger.”