Galactic Marshal III
by
Hilltopper

CHAPTER 10

It had been 3 days since we had left Prowhiness. Neither Jonnie nor the aliens had made contact with us. I was now officially worried sick. When Karen came into the galley for breakfast, I confronted her.

“We have got to go back to Prowhiness. I feel that Jonnie’s in trouble.”

“I know how you feel but I think that is a dead end.”

“Then what do we do? I can’t just wait here in orbit any longer.”

Karen thought a minute.

“Let’s contact Sam. Maybe he has heard something. If not, he might authorize a trip to Prowhiness. We can’t just go on our own.”

I sighed.

“I know. OK, call him.”

Karen went to the control room to contact Sam. I tried to eat but my heart wasn’t in it. I went to my room to check on Raylan. He was still sleeping. As I watched him, I couldn’t help but wonder what the future held for him. God, I wish Jonnie was here! When Karen walked in, I was crying uncontrollably. She just sat by me and we hugged. Finally, I settled down. Raylan was waking up so I changed him and carried him to the galley. As I fed him, Karen filled me in on her conversation with Sam.

“They haven’t heard anything either. Sam is not worried yet but he is getting a lot of heat over the gate thing. The aliens are definitely making the Planetopolis nervous. The government does not want a technologically advanced race living on one of their planets.”

I nodded.

“I bet the government powers are livid. What makes it worse is no one knows where the alien’s home planet is located. You know, one would think that the aliens would have colonies on lots of planets.”

Karen shook her head.

“They did not travel much until the crisis. Apparently, thousands of years ago, they had some bad interactions with other races during their space exploration days.
Since then, they have stayed mostly close to home. Now of course, they are seeking out planets to move to.”

“I guess that explains us not running in to them until now. What does Sam want us to do?”

Karen laughed.

“Officially, nothing; unofficially, he has given us the OK to go back to Prowhiness. He figures that, since that is where we first encountered the aliens, it is the best possibility to find out where they might be.”

“Wow! I really didn’t think he would go for it. After all, Prowhiness is way outside the Planetopolis.”

“Yeah, but like you, he doesn’t want to just sit back and wait.”

“OK, I guess I better inform the council of our plans.”

I called Margaret. She wasn’t happy but she knew there was nothing she could do about it. She did make me promise to keep her informed. I figured I owed the council that much.

“All right, Gina, take us to Prowhiness and put us into a high orbit.”

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I stood still for a few minutes and just listened. Even if this machine had knocked out the power, I should still hear the aliens outside. Unfortunately, all was quiet. I squeezed my body back out of the depression. No one appeared to be around. I could see a faint glow off in the distance. I decided to head for it but nothing seemed right. I had a bad feeling about this. I carefully started for the glow but, after taking a few steps, lights suddenly came on. This was not the cavern the device was in when I entered it.

“What the hell is going on here?”

I looked around. This looked more like an aircraft hanger than a cave. The room was huge but nothing was in it except the device and me. I could now see that the glow was coming from a doorway about 30 meters away. I went to it and through. The room on the other side was much smaller than the one I had left. It was filled with all kinds of strange looking objects. I walked over to an oblong black thing on a pedestal. As soon as I touched it, it started humming. I took my hand away and it stopped. I realized that I was able to activate it just like Tinker’s device. As I looked around the room, it occurred to me that all these objects seemed to be from the same culture that made the planet stabilizing device. Either the aliens had brought a lot more objects to their planet or I was now on another planet. All my senses told me the latter was true even though my brain didn’t believe it.

“How on Earth did I get here?”

The only thing I could think of was that the device went back to its home planet some how with me inside.

“This is just great!”

The room didn’t seem to have another door. I decided to ignore all the gadgets for now. What I needed was to find out where I was. I went back into the hanger-like room. I walked around the walls to see if I could find another door. I found several including a large double door but none would open for me. This made no sense at all. I returned to the gadget room. I didn’t recognize any of the objects much less know what they were used for. It became all too apparent that I was stuck here with no food or water. My only hope was that Tinker’s people knew where I went and were coming for me. I was not optimistic.

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There was nothing we could do until we reached Prowhiness and maybe not then. I went to my room to wait. I needed to think. Even though Sam had sort of approved our going, the council would be even madder at me now. I did not see any way to reconcile with them. Raylan and Jonnie were my life. I know Jonnie wants Raylan to be a boy and I do too. It did not seem likely for that to happen on Fledora. Of course, if the aliens did move part of their population to Fledora, everything would change. I know they don’t see it that way but it would. I just wish I knew what was happening with Jonnie. She is upset that the aliens change her back to female but I think she was heading that way anyhow. I hope she can adjust. Not hearing anything has me very worried. I feel that the aliens are up to something. There was a tapping on my door and Karen walked in.

“Sorry to bother you but we are almost there. I guess we should figure out what to do.”

I sat up.

“Yeah, we could send out a call to the aliens but I don’t know what else. If they did leave, we might be at a dead end like you said.”

“I think I’ll contact my people at the resort. Maybe they have heard something.”

“OK”

We entered orbit and I put out a call for Tinker. There was no response. Karen decided it would be best for her to go down to talk in person. After she left in the shuttle, I put out another call to the aliens. Again there was no answer. I went back to my room and lie down. In spite of my worry, I did drop off to sleep. My dreams were all over the place. In one, I was male and Jonnie female. I awoke to the sound of the shuttle coming aboard. I decided to wait for Karen in the control room. When she entered, I could tell she was depressed.

“Nothing! No one has heard a thing. It’s like the aliens have disappeared.”

“Well, your people only know the avatars.”

“True, so what do we do now? I guess you got no response.”

I shook my head.

“All we can do is keep sending. Gina, send a call every 15 minutes.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

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Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to check out each of the objects. Maybe I could find something useful or blow myself up. At the moment, either would be OK. There was writing on most of them but it was incomprehensible to me. One had what looked like a view screen. There were no knobs or switches, just many small indentions. I put my fingers in each. Suddenly, it came to life. An image of a person that looked human was talking and pointing at something. I could not understand the language but it was not nearly as strange as Tinker’s. I played around with it a little but, with no understanding the language, it was useless to me. I picked up several more objects but they were either dead or did not respond to me. I was handling an oval gadget when it started to whine and a streak of light pulsed from it making a burn place on the wall. After recovering from my shock, I realized it was either a weapon or a cutter of some kind. I thought that I might be able to use it to get through one of the doors I had found in the large room. I picked a door and, after several failed attempts, I figured the thing out and managed to cut a meter square hole. All was dark looking through the hole. When the metal had cooled, I eased myself through the door. I stood up and some light popped on. Obviously, not all the lights were working but I could see enough. The room was small and had many containers stacked about. There was no other exit from it. I couldn’t read the labels so I tried opening a few of the containers with no luck. I thought for a second about using the cutter on them but decided that was a bad idea. This was getting me no where. I went back through the hole I had made and selected another door; the big double one. In no time I had me another meter square hole. I could see a little like maybe sunlight was filtering in. I went through the hole into a long hallway. High overhead light was coming from some very dirty skylights. I walked about 20 meters. No doors were on either side. At the end, I came to a destroyed doorway. It looked like someone had blown it open. On the other side was --- well, a mess. Whatever had happened here had torn this place apart. As I walked along, I started feeling a little dizzy. I sat down on a piece of metal and looked about. It was almost as if I was outside but I could see no sky. Neither could I see a ceiling. After a certain height, everything faded to darkness. I started to stand up but my dizziness was getting worse. I fell backwards and landed on a grating. I tried to push myself up but blacked out.

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We were eating in the galley when Gina announced that she had received a text message from Tinker.

“OK, put it up in the control room.”

We stood and walked to get the message.

“We are on our way to Prowhiness. Please stand by.”

I turned to Karen.

“Well, cryptic as ever.”

“Yeah, they do have a way with words.”

We went back to the galley.

“I hope the ‘we’ includes Jonnie.”

Karen frowned.

“It might not. I think they would have said she was with them if she was.”

“If Jonnie’s not with them, what does it mean?”

“Let’s not speculate. Nothing good will come from that.”

We finished eating and went back to the control room to wait for Tinker. About 40 minutes later, Gina said the alien ship would like to dock.

“Yes, Gina, tell them to come ahead.”

A few minutes later, we heard the ship contact our docking port. We walked to the hatch to meet them. The hatch opened and Tinker and Bell stepped through. As Karen had surmised, there was no Jonnie.

“Where is Jonnie?”

Tinker faced me.

“Gina is not with us. Let us go and talk. We have much to discuss.”

We went to the galley and sat down.

“First, I must confess some things. Gina came with us to our planet in order to attempt to activate a device we had found that we hoped would stabilize our planet. I am sorry for not telling you this before hand.”

I bristled.

“You are always sorry after the fact. Why can’t you just come clean with us from the beginning instead of always doing things surreptitiously.”

Tinker ignored me and continued.

“We are happy to inform you that the device seems to have done its job. Our planet is stabilizing. This means, with luck, we will not have to move our people off world.”

I frowned even though Tinker was smiling broadly.

“OK, if it worked then where’s Jonnie?”

Tinker and Bell looked at each other. Tinker appeared to sigh.

“I need to give you some background first. The device needed to be activated by an individual with a specific DNA sequence or very close at least. We had determined that Gina had such a DNA. The device has an indention that the person would go into in order to activate it.”

Tinker paused and looked at each of us.

“Gina managed to enter the machine. A few minutes later, a whine started to build. When it reached a point that we could hardly stand it, there was a very bright flash of light. It stunned us for a few minutes. When we recovered, the device was gone.”

I stared at Tinker a few seconds.

“What do you mean gone?”

“It just was no longer there. The device apparently did its job and left.”

“Left where?”

“That is the trouble. We don’t know.”

I was getting furious.

“Then find out!”

“That is why we are here. This planet has ruins from an ancient civilization. We found the device among them. In fact, we think Prowhiness may have been the planet of origin for your race. Anyway, since the device came from here, our thinking is that it came back here when activated by Gina.”

“Then what are we waiting for, let’s go look!”