The Time of The Cat 23
ST. LOUIS
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Regards,
Eric
The St. Louis transporter turned out to be in an inconvenient location because the six of us (seven, if you counted the cat) had to walk a couple of miles to reach the building that housed the junction of five transporters. I thought that it would have made more sense for the stations to be located in close proximity, but the Pugs were alien and thought in alien patterns. Humans have enough trouble understanding other human cultures, so you’d expect an unearthly alien culture to be even more incomprehensible. The only saving grace was that our unknown annotator had written the street addresses on many of the locations, otherwise, we’d have spent an inordinate amount of time searching.
We descended to the street level of the building without seeing anyone and, once on ground level, we exited through a service door in the alley and filtered out onto the street. We came out in an area of town that was depressed-looking. The stores were old with faded signs and not much merchandise displayed in the windows. The goods that were on display were shabby and covered with dust. The whole area gave off a tired and dispirited feel. Even the people were hostile in their looks.
I guess that we looked a little too affluent to be walking through their neighborhood. A couple of groups of young men acted as if they were thinking about giving us a try, but then backed off when they met our eyes. We weren’t in the mood for any trouble right then and it showed.
We hiked for a while and ended up in the middle of a street near a restaurant. The restaurant promised the world’s greatest rib eye steak, which seemed unlikely given the shabby look of the place. The map indicated that the transporter hub was around this area someplace. As we looked around, there were several buildings that might have housed the things, but one nearby location seemed more suspicious than the others. Of course, it may have been because we saw a Pug entering the door as we turned the corner. That was a distinct sign that we were in the right place.
As we approached the building into which the Pug had disappeared, we saw a small sign over a stairway door indicating that no-fault divorces could be obtained for $99.00 upstairs. We duly opened the door and ushered ourselves into the divorce attorney’s domain.
Once we reached the head of the stairs, we saw that there were several offices there. As luck would have it, we were saved the trouble of opening all of the doors because the Pug came out of the one farthest down the hall. He took about half of a step and dropped with two splinters in his brisket.
We cleared the door he came out of, but there was no need for alarm. It opened into a large room with no occupants. There were five transporter doors spaced out on the walls; two doors on each of two walls and one on the third.
We entered from the hall through the door on the fourth wall dragging the Pug’s body in after us. No sense leaving a mess that would alarm any of the divorce lawyer’s prospective clients. I didn’t want them to think that deceased bodies were a normal part of the divorce process. That might or might not be the case, but in either event, it was unlikely that they would be as ugly as the dead Pug.
I’ve heard about divorces where one of the parties, usually the husband, would have probably been better off dead, rather than in the condition the judge left him. Most recently I read about a sailor, deployed on a submarine in the South Pacific, who was ordered to appear in court for a child custody hearing within three days or go to jail. The judge didn’t seem to think that it mattered that the sub wasn’t going to come into port for at least three months. Sometimes I worry about our society’s direction, that and the fact that common sense is no longer a prerequisite for sitting on the bench if it ever was.
As we entered the room with the transporters, there was the continuous sound of a small flat-screen TV turned on with the audio on low. It was located on the third wall beside the single transporter door.
The news was on and the announcer was finishing a story about a massive explosion under Fort Knox. It had apparently destroyed the entire gold supply that was stored there.
I had a suspicion that there hadn’t been much gold there for years, based on the strenuous resistance to auditing that the government had exhibited. I figured that at least a few bureaucrats were actually breathing sighs of relief. Our eraser bomb had given them a perfect cover.
The next story was shocking to us, both in content and the speed at which it had appeared. Somehow our enemies knew about both of us and either had close ties to the government or had infiltrated the TV news system. There must have been a camera system located in or near the Astoria building because our pictures were on the screen with a headline that identified us as unknown terrorists. The news babe was reading a script that indicated that we were the subject of an APB and were wanted by the FBI, NSA, and various other alphabet soup agencies because we were suspects in several bombings and were likely to blow other things up, if not apprehended.
Well, they got that last part correct. If we could, we were going to blow up a lot of stuff, all Pug-related, of course. Overall, the implications were not good for the success of our self-imposed mission.
Liz had the map spread out on the floor and we hovered over it as she squatted down to point with her finger at locations. The map showed the five transporter heads in the room and their destinations, but it didn’t identify which door was which.
Our plan was to split into two groups; one for Lubbock, Texas, while the other would go to Lander, Wyoming. The remaining three transporters in the room were connected to San Francisco, our Moon, and back to Astoria.
The Astoria connection wasn’t to the transporter we’d come through. It looked like it connected to the door that I had noticed appearing and disappearing on the wall. The symbol for that transporter on the map was in a different color than most of the others, and there were only a few like it. I thought this was fortunate because a transporter that only appeared when it was in use was likely to prove an inconvenient surprise for us at some point. It was a good idea to keep close track of those units. The map indicated that they were coming in at Estes Park, or rather a location that was partway up the summit of Rocky Mountain Park. Then, from somewhere in southeast Estes Park, they were jumping to Loveland.
From that point, the transporter links gradually fanned out into the full system. We thought that might be their idea of securing the off-planet connection. It wouldn’t have been easy to get off-planet or to even know that the off-planet link existed without the map.
For some reason known only to the Pugs, the transporter loop that I’d taken previously to one of the moons of Jupiter only went there and back. The loop to our own Moon was similar. I couldn’t think of what they wanted with these locations. Perhaps they thought they were nice places for sightseeing or romance or whatever. Anyway, the map indicated that our Moon was a dead-end and as far as we were concerned, it was of no interest.
The full network covered the globe with hubs located in many of the major cities. The Pugs had their own definition of major cities, though, because Alanya, Turkey had twenty different transporter heads converging in its downtown area. As nice as Alanya might be (and I had been there, once), it was not what would be called a major city, although the residents might argue with you about that.
Judging from the number of stations scattered across the world, it was obvious that the Pugs were either hyperactive or had been working on their invasion plan for quite a number of years. Either way, it created a huge problem for us, because we were playing catch-up in a game that we’d only just found out was being played.
I previously mentioned that the link they were using to access the Earth was in the Rocky Mountain National Park. That transporter led to one of the moons of Saturn. Liz thought it was Titan, but I wasn’t sure. I’d decided to look it up on Wikipedia, the next time I had access to a computer, but for now, I tentatively decided to accept her identification at face value.
I’d been to Io, or at least that’s what Liz called it. I was dubious about that also. I mean, how does one know? I had been on another planet-sized object and knew that it was orbiting a larger planet, but I couldn’t tell the difference between Titan and Ganymede. It was hard enough to recognize that I was on a moon.
I pulled my mind back to the fact that I had Pugs to discourage. I didn’t care where I discouraged them, as long as they remained in that state permanently.
We figured that our species’ best advantage was if the Pugs were effectively banned from our solar system for as long as possible. We really wanted to get to the Titan connection and figure out how to break it. If we could break that link either on Titan or on the Estes Park side, it would slow them down. They wouldn’t be able to continue to build up their forces on Earth.
If we could break the link on Titan, it would probably prove more disruptive than breaking it on Earth. We knew that it would be better to destroy their main base on Titan. That might give us the time we needed to develop an effective response to their next attempt at invasion.
Of course, they could eventually come back. Based on the booklet we’d found, it was hard to tell how long it would take for them to do so. The good news was that it looked as if they had left one of the more troublesome planets to the local inhabitants. Liz and I were hoping that they’d end up classifying Earth as another one that was more trouble than it was worth. If we had anything to say about it they certainly would.
Our immediate problem here in St. Louis was the five unidentified transporter doors. We only wanted to use two of them; the two that went where we wanted. We couldn’t read their script on the map and there were no apparent markings on any of the doors anyway.
The best we could figure was to go through each of the transporters sequentially and hope for the best. This is not a great plan if you want to remain unseen by the opposition. The chances were high that at least one of the doors would open to reveal one or more Pugs.
We’d been lucky so far since we’d never run into an overwhelming force of the creatures. They had to think that we were some kind of super-heroes at this point. They’d been on the losing end of every encounter with us. However, our luck was bound to change for the worse, eventually.
As we were looking at each other over the map and scratching our heads figuratively, if not literally, the single transporter on the wall by itself dinged and popped open. Our old acquaintance, the bearded sycophant stuck his head out, cursed, and took a shot at us with a sawed-off twelve gauge. It was lucky that he wasn’t too stable. He’d apparently been drinking again and staggered as he shot.
The load of shot struck the TV right in the middle of a commercial for a sexual performance enhancement drug. This seemed to me to be an appropriate comment on the idea that two people sitting in separate bathtubs is somehow sexually enticing.
The TV flared and went dark and so did Mister Beardy Guy. His eyes crossed as at least two different splinters of toxic glass struck right between them. He flopped in the doorway. We’d eliminated one of the transporters courtesy of his abortive ambush.
I observed, “That door must lead to the Astoria building. That’s where Joe left him.”
Rudy said, in his acerbic fashion, “Why don’t you try telling us something that’s not so obvious.”
In the spirit of the thing, I said, “Well, did you know that some owls aren’t so smart?”
Apparently, he missed my insurance commercial reference or he wasn’t in the mood for trivia. He stooped over the bearded guy and pulled out a wallet.
“Says here his name is Vern Wardell, from Kansas. Wonder what led him into this mess.”
“It makes no difference to either him or us. His song’s ended,” I answered, earning a look of puzzlement from all, but Liz. “What we really want to know now is how do we separate out the other transporters.”
We kept coming back to that problem. We decided that our entire group would enter each one in a clockwise direction. If we could, we’d identify the location and pop right back without disturbing anything or anyone. If one of the locations was Lubbock, Rudy’s group would stay and Liz and the cat, and I would go back and try the next transporter. If we hit Lander first, my group would stay, while they went back.
We were quite aware that splitting up wasn’t a recommended strategy.
Despite that consideration, we’d still decided to approach the Estes location from more than one direction. This was the only way we could accomplish that kind of forked attack. Our rationale was based on the idea that coming from a couple of different locations would allow at least some of us to get through. We weren’t sure if the routes were being watched. If they were, we hoped that they’d ease up on their surveillance, if they caught some of us coming from one direction. If they intercepted one group, perhaps they’d miss the other prong of the fork.
Based on that somewhat dubious logic, we summoned the first of the four remaining transporters and got inside. These four transporters were apparently single-route ones since there was only one activation button in each. They must have been earlier models or perhaps the Pugs felt that they were totally secure because the video function was also missing from them. The map wasn’t marked clearly and there was no way to check our destination until we arrived.
Rudy’s hand hovered over the button as he looked over his shoulder to ensure that we were all ready to shoot if need be.
“I’ll keep my hand on the button to return if we don’t like what we see,” he assured us.
I nodded, grimly and said, “OK. Go!” and off we went.