Mission: A Venus Affair, Page 2

  “Well,” he seemed to pause before finishing and it surprised me that I was now referring to Magnum as “he”. When did that happen? Interesting times. “Try to think of that creature the way it thinks about you. Something useful to use and then discard. Because that is what it would have done to the human race had it ever gotten its way. You are saving your people from unwanted and undeserved destruction from dangerous enemies. This creature, which sought to use your DNA is only reaping what it has sown, so to speak. Think no more of it and focus on the task of saving your own. And your family.”

  He was right. And yet, still, a slippery slope was dangerous to tread. Such an outlook could turn any decent man into a monster. I was out here fighting the monsters in the dark. I didn’t want to turn into one of them.

  But I had my family and my love for them that saved me, reined me in from such a callous ideology taking over. Diamond had his older brother, with whom lately he had started speaking to again. Who did Robin have? Or Ellen?

  “So is this weapon going to actually be a living being?”

  “That, I do not know yet. But even if it is sentient hard choices must be made, Mr. Astor. I am sure you’ve made many already when it comes to life and death. It must be done in all areas of life. The future that we face requires it. Either choose the rights of those who would destroy you and take away your right to exist, or choose your own survival. This weapon will be unique, the only one of its kind, and it will be powerful. Most importantly, this weapon is necessary.”

  “Right.” And I’m just a cog doing what I’m told. Again. Oh well. Moping time was over.

  All kinds of dark and disturbing thoughts came with that word captivity. It wasn’t right but we had a right to survive and on our own terms.

  “Magnum, tell me more about the plans to build this weapon.”

  “Concrete knowledge is still limited. We are in the preliminary stages of building it but I will do my best. What do you wish to know?”

  2

  I woke up again with sweat pouring off me. I lay back down in bed. Pam was sleeping soundly next to me. Something had changed again within me. I had these strange night dreams. When I opened my eyes at times I saw a halo of blurry light; dots and shapes that dashed to and fro in front of my eyes. At first, I’d thought that my retina was detached. But it only happened at night and I came to believe that it was all part of whatever transformation was taking place because of the experiment. It started in me a growing concern at what I might become. There was a benefit. I could sense when alien beings were near. But there was the unknown that seemed to be taking shape now. And as far as aliens, I sensed none on the ship.

  Instead of frightening and needlessly stressing out my wife by mentioning this I decided to check my mail again.

  I had no new messages yet for the day from Robin, Magnum or Diamond. I was sure that would change later in the day. The halo glow in my left eye suddenly rose up and then lowered and disappeared. And a memory came to me. I looked up Peter’s name and number again and sent him a message. He had never answered my previous message weeks ago. I worried that perhaps he was in some kind of trouble or that something was wrong. I hoped the kid was okay.

  After that, I went to the living room. All was quiet on the home front. The kids were still asleep. Mary was holding her bear beside her. As I watched them I wondered with all the craziness in the universe whether I could really do what I set out to do; save the world. Whether the world and the future they would find when they grew up would be as bounteous and as good as mine or whether it would be destroyed. I wondered if I would be forever changed and unable to be with them any longer one day. I had the fight of my life on my hands. All humans did. I owed it to them to fight until my dying breath. I just hoped it wouldn’t end in darkness. I wandered back to the living room quarter and gazed out of the wide viewport. The sun seemed a beacon burst of bright, dazzling white and yellow light. The rest was only the blackness of space.

  . . .

  Arriving at Vepaja was a journey in itself. Now, at the end of the journey, everyone on board, all two thousand five hundred tourists, and the crew, were required to stay in their cabins as the ship’s pressure levels adjusted for entering the planet. Jonah was busy reading aloud a book on the planet Venus and its true character.

  “Venus’s lovely atmosphere is made of thick, yellow clouds of sulphur - poisonous fumes to be sure - carbon dioxide and deadly metal rain,” he said with great relish. “Sulphuric acid and pressures strong enough to choke and then flatten us all like badly made pancakes!”

  “How lovely,” said Pam absently checking something on her data pad. Jonah went on, pulling up more planetary images on his tablet. This time he manipulated them to be larger to gaze at them in 3D. The small whirling images of Venus came spinning up in the air right above his datapad and as he moved further into the image it revealed the planet’s corroded surface beneath its atmosphere. Furious, fiery storms, volcanic activity and silvery rain came down on the hologram surface.

  “It vomits its surface inside out every few eons. But the most interesting thing about Venus is that it rains heavy metal and it snows metal too,” he

  “Fascinating,” I said. “Don’t scare your sister.” He shot a mischievous glance at Mary, who for once, seemed unperturbed by his attempt. She was blithely ignoring him, engrossed in a book about cats.

  The extremely advanced biosphere system set in place here for Vepaja and for the newer capital city still in construction everything would look and feel nearly like Earth’s atmosphere. The temperatures rose as the ship entered Venus’s suffocating yellowish clouds. There was some turbulence.

  “It’s too hot in here,” muttered Mary.

  “I know, Mary. It’ll pass, sweetie,” said Pam. It really was getting uncomfortably hot. I felt trickles of sweat slide down my temples and chest. Mary was getting flushed. She picked her bear and hugged it.

  “You feeling alright, Jonah?” I asked.

  “Yup! Bart from math class told me this would happen. There’s nothing to fear. Besides, it’s not like everything was made by the Whitney Corporation. We’d all be dead by now if that were the case.” I smiled proudly at my son. He already understood the importance of company loyalty. And quality!

  “Your company, Vartan Inc. made a lot of materials for the city and ships too, right?” I nodded.

  “We did.” Although I wasn’t so sure we had any contracts with the Star Goddess line.

  All of a sudden the temperatures became almost unbearably hot, nearly one hundred ten degrees inside the ship.

  “Oh my God! This is terrible!” Pam began fanning herself. It felt as if we’d been dropped in the middle of Las Vegas.

  “What’s going on?” I went to the computer to check something. Employees with the right clearances could always do a quick search for most companies in Vartan Inc.’s database to view contracts. I hoped to high hell Vartan didn’t work on ship materials so shoddy that they couldn’t withstand extremely high temperatures. That was not possible. I could not believe this was the work of my company.

  And it wasn’t. Well, well, well. I was dismayed but not surprised at all. And which corporation was involved in shipping the materials to be built for the Silver Goddess? Whitney Corp.! Better known as Shoddy Works ‘R’ Us, at Vartan Inc.

  Inside the bio-dome was a verdant, rich green world where humans could play and enjoy themselves. A paradise under killer skies, hidden away where we couldn’t glimpse its deadliness. The Virtual Voice came on throughout the ship’s speaker system.

  “Please stay in your cabins until the captain directs you to de-board. Be aware that pressure changes in the ship may cause objects in the cabin to float or become pinned to surfaces. Please station yourselves and any children, pets or service animals in the ship operated pressure chamber tanks located either in the dining room of your luxury suite or located in the bedrooms in all other cabins and staterooms until the captain has notified passengers that the ship has landed.�
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  “Okay, kids. Up and at’ em!” The kids immediately went into the tanks and Pam strapped them down inside. Then she climbed into the tank beside them and strapped herself in. I strapped myself inside the tank on the other side just as the tank shield lowered over me. Jonah was tapping on his shield and making funny faces. Mary giggled. We were all excited. This was going to be the family vacation we’d never forget!

  The hot air was pressing down on me, making me feel as if I were deep under water. For a few seconds I thought perhaps I was suffocating and in front of my eyes, I saw savage flashes of light, like a force pressing me forward in time and space, coming unbidden and unfinished. Perhaps it was my imagination. After about twenty minutes I could feel the pressure drop dramatically. I sighed in relief. We were finally here.

  I heard a low siren go off through the ship as it passed through the bio-dome barrier and was allowed to land and dock. The captain’s voice came on through the ship intercom system, letting all on board know that it was finally safe to come out of the tanks. Pam had most of our things packed. As she came out of her tank the front door to our cabin chimed. It was the housekeeping mech. It had the last of our clothes washed, dried and pressed. Pam deftly took them up and packed these away in the last chest. When I went on business trips I had learned to pack light but when I had the wife and kids, packing light simply wasn’t going to happen. Pam packed for every worst scenario she could think of and could manage to neatly and efficiently put away in our luggage and chests just about half of the clothes the Astor family owned. It usually drove me nuts but this time for some reason it just gave me a feeling of security; that the children and I were well cared for. Still, it was so much stuff!

  One of the mechs brought around a large luggage hover flatbed and lugged luggage on top, three chests and two large suitcases, and we finally filed out the door and toward the exit where we merged into a stream of passengers along with us in the halls, eventually into a larger stream of passengers and this turning into a river of passengers de-boarding at the main deck. Hover luggage carriers and luggage flatbeds hummed along with the talking, laughter and excited tourists coming to Vepaja for the first time.

  When we got inside the spaceport I hailed a hover cab. It took a little while as the small spaceport was packed. Pam hailed a carrier-labor mech over and it hauled our stuff inside with the help of the cab driver. He stared at me for a few moments in surprise and then shrugged, continuing on with the luggage. I looked around, wondering.

  “Is something wrong?” The cabbie shook his head.

  “Nah. Just for a moment I thought I knew you or somethin’.” Pam was struggling with a large carry-on bag. “You need some help with that, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” I said and reached for the bag.

  “Thanks, honey,” she said.

  “Are you sure you brought enough stuff, Pam?” I said. Pam shot me a warning look. “I’m just hoping we don’t end up losing anything or leaving anything behind. Like on the ship.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t leave anything behind, Bob.”

  “Mom I’m hungry and I just saw an advert for-”

  “-the seven layer sandwich?” finished Pam. Jonah nodded, grinning.

  “Jonah, half of the things we give you, you won’t eat. You know you’re not going to eat that sandwich.”

  “Yes, I will, mom!” I looked around and saw the advert streaming out on a long screen, a brilliant and delectable looking holo-video across the top of the spaceport building as the cabbie prepared to lift off and enter air traffic. It was seven layers of delicious, luscious goodness: avocado, tomato, pork belly slices with the cracklins’, lettuce, melted wasabi cheddar and grilled spring onions splayed out the sides between two potato sourdough slices spread with a special plum barbecue sauce and stone ground mustard. A man would have to unhook his jaw to eat that. What a beauty! It looked like the perfect meal with a side of chips and a beer. I grinned at Jonah.

  “It does look good, doesn’t it? Tell you what, when we get to our hotel and unpack everything let’s go find out where we can get that sandwich. We’ll split one.” Jonah’s smile lit up his face. “And I say our first stop on the itinerary for today is. . .” I said with dramatic flair, “the super circus!”

  “Yay!!” My kids shouted. The cabbie chuckled. Pam just smiled gently but her eyes were lit up with excitement too. It would give us a chance to visit the Grand Pyramid Hotel.

  From our view flying through Vepaja, the city was a graceful spread of gleaming walkways, obelisk towers, pyramid and temple-like buildings overlayed with gold or bronze interspersed with large manicured paths of tropical flowers and plants with the city surrounded all along its perimeter by dense jungle, so impossibly green it seemed an emerald studded fantasy. Above us was the pale yellow sky, the sun a blot of white shining like a bright jewel. The biosphere that ran the artificial climate and weather patterns for the city was more advanced and powerful than any made before it. Technology really was wonderful.

  An endless garden, Vepaja seemed. And surrounding Vepaja for miles and miles outside the city perimeter was dense, lush jungle. Tropical flowers of all kinds bloomed everywhere.

  Nearing the city center, out of a green carpet of palms and other tropical trees, a large park surrounded by upper and lower walkways was a golden and crystal pyramid, the Grand Pyramid Hotel, shining bright like freshly polished crystal. Cutting through the center of the city was an engineered river of aquamarine colored water bridged by a beautiful Silver Bridge, made of steel and stone and embellished with silver and copper plated bricks, and off in the far distance was a white and silver sand beach and a small sea to the west. I felt myself decompressing physically and mentally. Pam’s eyes danced with excitement. When she was happy, I was happy. Her face lit up with an incandescence I hadn’t seen in a long time. My kids? That was a foregone conclusion. They’d been itching to get on with this trip since they first stepped onto the space ship. Yeah, this trip was a very good idea.

  The outer realms of the city just beyond for miles around was surrounded by jungle but beyond that, in the far, far distance the land seemed to disappear into a yellow and gray horizon of sulphuric mists with the hint of the metal snow-capped mountain range far into the west beyond the bio-dome. The Akna Montes.

  Vepaja and the neighboring future capital city currently being erected, Cythera, was located on one of Venus’s two main highland regions, or continents, the Ishtar Terra. I thought of the hellish, killer wasteland that surrounded the place, the harsh mistress Venus really was. I wondered if I was only imagining seeing it or if it were simply my mind’s eye informing me of what was real out there.

  Before the cabbie started to climb down I thought I’d glimpsed the faint lens flare of the bio-dome of the second shield and the capital city being constructed, right now, merely a glimmer in the eye.

  “Ooh, look daddy! What’s that?” Mary pointed at the great gold and crystal pyramid.

  “That’s where the super circus is, Marybear.”

  ”Really? Is it a side show circus or a real circus?” she asked.

  “I didn’t check. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a side show circus. I think it’s more like balletic dance and acrobatics.”

  “It’s an expansion of Circe du Soleil and New Cavalia. I looked it up. Although it would be interesting to see some sideshow freaks in the performance,” said Jonah proudly. I pointed at Jonah.

  “See, Mary, there you go.” Mary looked very disappointed.

  “Aw, poor little baby doesn’t get to see any freaks,” teased Jonah.

  “Be quiet!” snapped Mary. “I wasn’t talking to you!”

  “You guys, stop it. Don’t even get started,” said Pam.

  We finally landed right in the parking facility near our hotel, a large ziggurat temple building in Ancient Babylonian style, The Queen of the Night. We passed under a grand replica of the Ishtar Gate. The walkway to the doors was lined with tall, graceful palm
trees. The lobby was palatial and crowded as we checked in. I had to grab Mary’s hand to keep her from getting lost. Standing in line I saw a glimpse of the hotel’s claim to fame, it’s fabulous hanging gardens, a replica of the fabled Hanging Gardens built by King Nebuchadnezzar for his Median queen. One of the seven ancient Wonders of the World. It was a dazzling experience even to glimpse it. We would have to go promenading through there before our vacation was over.

  A courtesy mech was assigned to us to show us to our rooms. A very shapely, anatomically correct female looking mech.

  One of the new mechs I suppose, I thought. Pam scowled as the mech swayed its hips slowly, leading us to the lift and then to the ninth flour.

  “Your room is right this way, sir, and madam,” it said in a soft, lilting feminine voice. Pam’s frown further twisted itself into an expression of disgust.

  “I hope you enjoy your stay at The Queen of Night Hotel, Mr. and Mrs. Astor. I will be your personal courtesy guide for your stay here. Should you need anything please use the hotel comlink system or your own comlink device and just call for me. I’m Delilah. That would be me. What do you need? I can replace your regular labor mech for just about anything you need. I am also a trained masseuse and-”

  “That will be all, Delilah,” said Pam curtly.

  “Very well then. Just remember to call me if you need anything for your stay or a tour guide for the city.” Pam’s eyes were on fire and not in a good way. Delilah turned and swayed seductively down the hall.

  “Call for Delilah!” Pam voiced sarcastically. I smirked at her annoyance. Maybe I should have seen this coming but honestly, I had no idea this would happen.

  “It’s just a mech, Pam.”

  “Since when do you like mechs enough to say something like that?”

  “I don’t. But I like Will. He’s like a friend. Almost family.”