CHAPTER TWO
A girl was hovering over his bed. She had long, blonde hair that fell to her knees in soft waves, and huge, almond-shaped eyes that seemed to plead without a word having been said. Her skin was pale, so pale that it was almost blue, and her limbs were frail, weak. A Novacadian?
She opened her mouth to speak, and when the words came out her voice was sweet and melodic. "Help us," she begged. "We are enslaved."
Not a Novacadian. Novacadians didn't speak; they were a silent species. But her physical features were those of that race, and everything about her, except her voice, was alien.
Anthony was haunted by this person, this being, who lingered at the foot of his bed. "What is it you want?" he whispered, trembling.
She raised her hands to him. "You are the only one who can free us."
Anthony sat up into a darkened room, wearing only his shorts. His muscled arms were beaded with tiny drops of sweat. The drapes on his bay window were open, and he could see the lights of the city from his bed. His dream...it had been so real.
He looked at his clock and saw that it was time to rise. He reluctantly got up, draped his robe over his shoulders, and padded over to the bathroom.
After he'd showered and dressed, he picked up his keys and his jacket and left the apartment, flipping off the lights as he closed the front door.
Driving to the base in the darkness of early morning, he found he took pleasure in watching the sunrise--the gradations of pink, amber, orange, and red that rose as the sun peeked up above a sullen landscape. He wondered how much longer humans would be able to enjoy watching that simple event before they would fry from the sun's heat in so doing. Global warming was no longer a theory, as it once was, it was a reality and a current threat. That was why Novacadia, untouched by man-made pollution, was being carefully considered as a colony, and that was the major reason why, Anthony assumed, he was going there.
He arrived at the front gates and showed the guard his identification badge. Once given the okay, he drove past the station and into the parking area. All of the visitors' spaces were full, he noticed. People come to watch the launch.
He pulled into his own reserved spot and killed his engine. Minutes later, a swipe of his pass card, and he was inside the massive stone building that was IAST--International Aeronautics and Space Travel. This administration building, which covered more than five football fields in length, connected to an even larger building by train, where the launch would eventually take place.
Anthony wove this way through long corridors, listening to the echoing taps of his feet on the pristine linoleum floors, on his way to the de-briefing session. Hidden away on the fifth floor in the Southeast corner of the building was the staff room where he and his superiors would meet.
He entered the room to find his peers--those who would be travelling with him--already sitting down in a semi-circle in plush swivel chairs.
"Late, Harding?" Jackson joked. He was a black-haired baby-face with a huge smile that resembled that of a jack 'o lantern with all its teeth. Anthony looked around. The general wasn't in yet. He had come with plenty of time to spare.
"I see all of you are sucking butt," he said. "We've got ten minutes yet until the de-briefing session starts."
"Always cutting it close," said Andrews. "Didn't you remember that we're launching off today?"
Among the crew were two psychologists, Dick Andrews and Tony Peterson, two medical doctors, Jim Johnson and Kingston Smyth, and two spacecraft technicians, himself and Fred Jackson. The long-distance spacecrafts were not designed to hold but a few people at a time, and so the IAST only sent small teams on a mission at a time. Crew members were carefully selected ahead of time, and Anthony was chosen as this team's co-pilot.
General Redding walked into the sterile board room, stiffly and proudly. The team members rose from their feet as he entered, then sat when he indicated so.
He cleared his throat, scanning his light blue eyes over the room of six young men. "Good morning, gentlemen," he said, as he took his seat behind the podium. "Launch will resume promptly at 1600 hours today. There has been no delay. All of the inspections have indicated that everything is working in tip-top order."
A brief applause followed. Peterson raised his hand. "At what time will we need to board the shuttle?"
General Redding gave a nod. "1400 hours. I have a crew doing last-minute preparations on board right now."
"Sir," Anthony asked, without raising his hand. "Details about this mission have been rather vague. What exactly will we be doing on Novacadia?"
A tense silence followed. General Redding narrowed his eyes to him, lowering his chin. "The Novacadians have been giving us some trouble. As you all know, when we first landed on the planet, we had no means of communication with them, even though they appeared to be a highly intelligent life form. All of our psychologists were unsuccessful in trying to establish communication with them, even though our team of doctors worked steadily on the project for several years. Apparently, not only do they not speak, but they do not use sign language or any other means of observable communication. We are still trying to figure out how this race can become so advanced as to build entire villages and live social existences without ever speaking to one another. But communication, at least to human beings, is crucial for any kind of progress, and to assess any dangers--and the latter is what is of most concern to us. So far, they appear to be a completely docile and peaceful race, but so long as we cannot share ideas with them, they are considered a military threat. So, to try and make contact with them, we began inserting communication chips.
"The communication chips are like radio transmitters, only they process and decode information within the brains of the Novacadians. Highly sensitive technology. But the natives resisted our efforts. Physically, of course, they cannot overpower us, and they have no weapons to speak of. But..." General Redding looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Rather, er, strange things have been happening."
"Such as?" one of the men asked.
General Redding's eyes darkened. "Several crew members have turned up missing, and we can only assume that the Novacadians are responsible." His tone was mysterious and secretive, as though he were leaving out tremendous and important blocks of information.
Silence peremeated the room. "What measures have you taken to determine if it really was the natives who did this?"
"We have many reasons to believe that they are responsible."
"And have you done anything to try and control the problem?"
"We've been keeping them inside their homes on a twenty-four hour basis while the project to begin communication with them is under way. Until and if we can ever actually speak with them, we have no way to trust them and can only consider them a threat."
"And what is it that you want us to do?"
General Harding looked at the room of young men. "I want you to assess them psychologically and join the efforts to make communication. I want you to go under-cover."
"But how could we possibly go under-cover? Surely you don't mean pose as Novacadians."
"Of course not," he said. "That would be impossible. What I want you to do is pose as allies. Mingle with them and learn as much as you can about them. Remember, we need to establish relations with these people eventually if we ever want to colonize the planet. But, bottom-line, right now these aliens are our enemies."