Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series Page 5

  15.

  Harvey liked the feeling he got from the shuttle at full speed much better than those maglev trains. More stable, and faster. So fast, it felt like they were sitting still and the galaxy was speeding by. Out his porthole, he watched the star systems blend into continuous lines, which were further obscured by the ionic stream’s inner rings. He was moving fast, almost inconceivably so. The Earth was twenty-five light years away, yet the shuttle would make the trip in just over three days.

  Three days. That was how long it had been since he’d seen Lea. And now, light years away, he had to get used to the fact he’d never see her again. He’d always remember her, though. She saved him, in more ways than one.

  With his back to the headrest, he lazed away the hours, refusing to sleep, lest he dream about that horrible creature again, which the computer still failed to identify. DeepSix promised, after he’d complained vociferously, they’d send an extermination crew and install the proper sensors in case there were any more of those nasty things. They would also have to send some personnel and specialized DNA bots to sort out the mess of bones and body parts in that graveyard. It wasn’t Harvey’s problem anymore. His job now entailed simply sitting on his ass for three days, picking up his credits, and retiring to Arizona, where it was nice and rainy. He missed rain.

  He didn’t remember when the message alert went off. Must have fallen asleep. He only heard it after the cabin attendant came by and nudged him on the shoulder.

  “Sir,” she smiled. “Your order is waiting for you in the autoserve.”

  “What?” he shook off the cobwebs. “I didn’t order anything.”

  “It’s for you. Do you want me to bring it to you?”

  “No, no. I’ll-I’ll go get it.”

  The shuttle had a much nicer snack bar than the food court on Cemetery Planet. No wonder. The spaceship was about two hundred years newer. Clean and bright, it featured the latest in food printing technology, yet, until now, he hadn’t had the desire to give it a whirl.

  “Order for Harvey Crane,” the message said aloud. “Order for Harvey Crane.”

  Bewildered, he stared at the autoserve, peering through the tempered glass, straining to identify the mystery food prepared just for him. He decided to open it and find out. To his surprise and great joy, found a heaping bowlful of dark chocolate ice cream, topped with scrumptious whipped cream, and a plump red cherry.

  Without a second thought, he plucked a spoon from the tray and removed the bowl. When he slammed closed the autoserve door, he caught his own reflection. Then he glimpsed something else, something that had his neck tingling and the hair on his arms electrified. In the glass, he saw it, but when he peeked over his shoulder, the vision wasn’t there. So he angled the autoserve door a little and got a better look of the human profile. Lea. It had to be. Then he saw, clear as day, her unmistakable smile, and felt more tingling on the back of his neck.

  “I’m with you, Harvey,”

  she spoke without words. “We’ll be together…always.”

  PART II

  1.

  Good riddance, Cemetery Planet, Harvey thought as he prepared to taste his first bite of coveted chocolate ice cream. With the spoon centimeters from his mouth, the shuttle shifted and he got a wobbly feeling in his legs. Then a yawning noise, deep and resonant, emanated from the very core of the ship. Harvey had never heard a sound like that before, and it scared him into dropping the spoon and the tray, toppling his ice cream all over the service counter.

  “Damn!” he frowned at the mess. The cleaning bots rolled out and did their jobs. It seemed the gods of ice cream wanted to keep his prized dessert and him apart. But he wouldn’t be deterred, and was about to press the Redo icon on the autoserve when a voice from behind had him cursing again.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the flight attendant stood in the aisle. “But we’re having some minor instability issues. I’m going to need to ask you to return to your seat.”

  “You call that minor?” he touched the icon and the food printer whirred into action. “Whole ship sounded like it was falling apart.”

  “Sir,” the attendant rushed in and hit the Cancel icon, ending his attempt at procuring his chocolaty treat. “Please. Your seat.”

  “Fine!” he stomped to the passenger cabin, a large area with dozens of recliners, arranged loosely, all of which were empty. Nobody coming or going to this bleak corner of the galaxy.

  Though he really didn’t feel like sitting, he did anyway, just in time for another big jolt. The ionic stream must have been fluctuating today.

  He waved his hand to call up the hovering wireless display, fitted into every seat as a convenience to the riders. Shuttle trips were long, and passengers needed a lot of diversions to pass the time, so the entertainment/news/game interfaces were popular. He didn’t care about news or games or even space weather, and why the shuttle was experiencing a rough go of it. He wanted to think about one thing—how to erase the terrible memory of Cemetery Planet from his mind? Maybe he wouldn’t stay on Earth after all. Within the last hundred years, several exoplanets suitable for human life had been discovered and colonized. Maybe he’d find one of those.

  With his eye movements, he cycled through the first of the settled worlds. Bradbury 7. Asimov Station. New New Orleans. None lit a fire in his gut, so he kept searching.

  “Planning on making a move?”

  The words came to him so clearly, and yet he thought they may have been in his head. Then he saw Lea’s image, superimposed lightly on the display, and almost broke into tears.

  “Lea,” was all he managed to say. Another jolt to the shuttle, sudden and strong, made the floating display flicker then fizzle out altogether. A burst of alarms and red blinking lights. His seatbelts tightened against his chest. Instinct told him to look out the porthole. The shuttle had guidance fins along the flanks of the hull which aided in flight. It was these fins that Harvey watched disintegrate into cosmic dusk right before his eyes. A burning, glowing redness spread out, leaving behind only charred dust which fell away into the brilliant, chaotic colorful backdrop of the ionic stream.

  “Hey! Hey! Miss!” he struggled with the seat restraints. His eyes flashed outside. The burning ember smoldered toward the fuselage. “Hey, Miss! Look!”

  “Sir,” the flight attendant stood next to his chair as cool as could be. “Please remain calm.”

  “Look, dammit!” he gestured with a glance out the portal, but the attendant had gone already, not at all concerned with what Harvey had to tell her. What he had to tell her was simply this—the shuttle was doomed. The hull was inches from being breeched. And, strapped in his seat, he could do nothing about it.

  “Harvey!” the floating display flickered on. This time it was Lea’s face alone. “Harvey, what’s happening?”

  “Something’s destroying the ship!” a series of violent shakes caused the ceiling to crack. “I’ve got to get out of here, but…” he glanced at the harnesses holding him in place. Lea took one look at them and lowered her head as if in deep thought, then the seatbelts loosened. Harvey was free!

  “There’s a lifepod,” she said breathlessly. “To the left…hurry!”

  He felt heat from the line of destruction that was turning the shuttle to ash. Not a moment to lose. A dash to the aisle and he saw the flight attendant, standing there with a dazed expression.

  “Come on!” he went to clutch her arm. In the chaos, it came as a shock that his fingers went straight through her wrist. She cocked her head and her image fizzled. A cheap hologram. He should have known.

  The lifepod only really had enough room for one, though there were a dozen seats on the shuttle. Cheap DeepSix bastards. At least the pod’s propulsion worked. His back pressed into the seat as it launched him away from the massive explosion that signaled the end of the shuttle.

  A halo of color and light, the most beautiful natural phenomenon Harvey had ever seen, bathed the lifepod in an ethereal quiet, and though the internal alarm
s inside the cockpit were buzzing and screaming, he felt a sense of peace. He couldn’t enjoy even a second of it. The small craft began twisting and turning. Its guidance systems were going haywire, and the screens showed red lights across the board. He was wondering if this just wasn’t his day.

  “Lea!” he was on his last vestige of hope. “Lea, are you with me?”

  Nothing, aside from constant electronic beeps and whistles, all getting louder, all coming at him faster and faster as the ionic stream zipped past the porthole. At least he was moving, hopefully to Earth, or, at the very least, away from the dreaded dual star system of Fomalhaut and Piscis Austrini. That was his only comfort. Alive or dead, he wanted to get as far away from Cemetery Planet as possible.

  The lifepod’s flight leveled off, giving Harvey hope he’d get out of this mess in one piece. The tiny craft must have had a homing code in its programming, and was taking him to Earth, to safety, and away from that world of death.

  He rode the bumpy cosmic freeway for quite some time. How long, he really didn’t know. He was tired. He was hungry. But most of all he was scared. Was this an endless trip to oblivion?

  Finally, the kaleidoscopic panorama that surrounded the lifepod seemed to lift like a curtain, and that in turn lifted Harvey’s spirits. When he saw the velvety inkiness of space, he became even more hopeful for a positive outcome. Then, when he spotted a single, yellow star—the Sun—he simply felt like collapsing with joy.

  He was home. The solar system that birthed him. The Sun that he’d grown up and lived under for most of his life. All of a sudden he forgot about the exocolonies. He wanted to live on Earth, no matter how crowded.

  The lifepod was simple. There really was no flying involved. The autopilot and the homing mechanism did all the work, thrusting and altering trajectory, taking him toward the brightest object in the horizon aside from the Sun. A planet. Earth. Had to be. It felt so damn good to be home. He dreamed of what he would do first, lost in the rapture of knowing his life was saved, and that soon he’d be kissing the ground of his birthplace.

  Another shift in course, though, brought the pod into a different field of reference, and Harvey noticed something odd about the Sun. Suddenly there were two Suns, one smaller than the other. For the first few seconds, he didn’t want to think, didn’t want to face the stark reality that had just stung him with a right cross. No way. No way was he back here. But facts were facts. This wasn’t a solitary star system. This was a binary system. And a closer inspection of the planet he was approaching told him it wasn’t a blue and beige and white marble teeming with life. It was a lonely, barren place, devoid of anything pure and good and thriving.

  It was Cemetery Planet.

  2.

  “NO!” he ripped into the control panel, hoping to find the guidance processor. Maybe with a little fancy rewiring, he could turn this baby around. No such luck. The electrical system sparked in his face. He smelled his own burnt hair and checked to make sure he wasn’t on fire. His smoldering head, though, was the least of his concerns. With the sudden arc, the controls went dark. The thrusters were out. The computer was kaput. The lifepod was now falling like a rock. No guidance systems to take it smoothly and cleanly to the visitor station landing pad. Without that, he was in for a rough touchdown.

  The lifepod rolled upside down, to the left and right. With no pitch, yaw, or roll controls, the craft was at the mercy of the planet’s gravitational pull. Harvey’s head banged hard and he saw stars. The rocking and shaking grew so violent, he thought he was going to be knocked cold. He needed to brace himself, though deep inside he knew the impact would most certainly kill him. Still, he held out hope.

  His prayers were answered. It was a small thing, a tiny gift from providence a fraction of a second before the lifepod made contact with the ground. Erupting from every angle, exploding into existence with a deafening boom, a soft cushion surrounded Harvey, forming an instant cocoon inside the cockpit and protecting him from any harm. Though muted by the airbags, he felt the impact enough to know it was hard. The lifepod bounced at least twice, skimming over rough contours striking several solid objects on the surface.

  Finally, with a creak and a groan, the lifepod came to rest. As soon as it stopped, the airbags deflated. He counted his lucky stars right then. Somehow, no thanks to his own bumbling, he hadn’t destroyed every lifesaving system. And he was even more grateful of this fact when a luminous circle appeared to his left, alerting him to a piece of equipment he hated, but certainly would need—a space suit.

  The suit fit loosely on his rather skinny frame. One size fits all, yeah right. However, it was airtight, and had a computer display in its helmet, linked with the mainframe in the visitor station. It located the nearest maglev train terminal five kilometers away, and calculated his air supply, estimating that, at a moderate walking pace, he would have enough O2 to make it. But not much more.

  After a sudden, miniature eruption, the hatch opened, and silt from outside wafted into the lifepod. He didn’t want to get out. But there was no way he could launch the tiny spacecraft back into orbit. No way to avoid the trek to the terminal. No way to elude the sea of tombstones, so infinite, he wondered if it truly did have an end.

  As soon as he set his sights on the terrain, peppered with death markers as far as the eye could travel, he wished in a way he’d died in that shuttle explosion. To be alone for another minute on this place—he didn’t want to think about it.

  His desperation grew with every headstone he beheld. Crumbling and decayed, they were some of the most ancient on the entire planet. Ostentatious spires and time-whittled statues of cherubs and giant crosses. A clear path of destruction where the lifepod had hit. Several markers broken. Piles of jagged rocks of varied sizes and shapes.

  He knew where he was—Zone 6. One of the oldest on the planet. Even older than Zone 12. Harvey had never traveled there in all the time he’d spent as the caretaker. The graves were so old, almost none of them had holomemorials.

  The place made his skin crawl. The melancholy eyes of the statues. The bent and broken grave markers. The silent, dark, unnatural stillness that seemed to blanket the whole region in mystery. Did he mention it made his skin crawl?

  And it wasn’t just Harvey who felt that way. Zone 6 had a reputation. The previous caretaker, just before departing from his yearlong shift, made special care to tell Harvey all about Zone 6. The strange noises. The spectral sightings. The overall bad feeling one got when visiting.

  He felt that energy, however intangible or nonsensical the notion, and it drove his feet. One step after the next, past the pod wreckage, past the hopelessly depressed cherubs, and out of that deserted place.

  “Hi, everybody! I hope you’re all doing better than I am!”

  Harvey jumped at the sound of the strange voice. Then, under his boot, he felt a pressure switch. And when he saw the person, a large man wearing twenty-first century clothes, it was confirmation—the one holomemorial in a million and he’d triggered it.

  “I don’t know what to say in this thing,” the man continued. His three-dimensional image hovered gently next to his gravestone. Harvey read the name: Kip Broders. “These hologram thingies are kinda new, but I’ll give it a shot. I love you guys so much…you all know that. I haven’t said it too many times. I realize that, and I want to…”

  Harvey found himself going over a mental checklist like he did when he was on the job. Projector function, check. Auditory functions, check. Playback quality, check. Then he realized he wasn’t working, and he was on a time limitation due to the small amount of air in his emergency suit, so he walked away in the middle of Mr. Broders’s speech. Time was wasting. Air was expiring. Plus, he had a long trip ahead of him.

  “You’re not leaving us, Harvey Crane! You’re not going anywhere!”

  Harvey stopped cold, his heart thumping. Did he just hear what he thought he heard?

  “What did you say?” he turned and strode back to the holomemorial. Mr. Broders
had apparently finished his message, and the projection folded into itself and then disappeared. “Wait! What the hell did you say to me!”

  He stomped near the grave, but the projection failed to start again. Over and over he trod on the pressure switch. Still nothing. No recording, or whatever it was that had shown itself just seconds earlier.

  Then a signal went off in his helmet, and a message came up on the visor display, telling him he was burning air faster now due to his unexpected physical exertion. Recalculating his range, the computer told him he was in serious danger if he didn’t get going now. The interruption was the tonic he needed, and he was instantly glad nobody else was out there to witness his foolishness. It had to be something in Broders’s message he’d heard wrong. It must have been a mistake. That was all.