The Time of The Cat 51
SOMEWHERE ELSE
We came out in a dome, just like the sergeant had said we would, but, to our great relief, there were no aliens of any kind in sight. This was unexpected but welcome. We carefully exited the transporter, watching for any opposition to show up. It was set flush against the front of a square building on one side of the dome. There were a number of such structures around the perimeter of the place. They were cube-like in the front, with the sidewalls curving down from the roof, joining smoothly against the dome wall. All of the structures had doors in the middle of their front, and all of the doors were closed.
The dome itself was at least two hundred yards in diameter and made out of some transparent material that looked like glass. I reckoned that it was something far stronger. It would just about have to be. There’s always a higher chance of being struck by falling space debris when the atmosphere is thin. Earth’s atmosphere is thick enough to burn up much of the fast-moving, smaller stuff before it causes a problem on the ground. The only things we have to worry about are the rocks large enough to crash through our roof on up to the ones big enough to cause global disaster, but they are fortunately rare.
The pressure inside the structure was about Earth normal, but the air had a funny smell. It left us short of breath, too. Either the oxygen level was low or maybe the CO2 balance was off. That squared with the Pugs’ nasty reaction to Earth’s air. We could breathe theirs with difficulty; they needed some kind of thin suit with, I presumed, a built-in respirator to protect them from ours.
The center of the dome gave us all pause. It was a lush garden filled with alien plants. The growing things were far more alien than the Pugs, and their colors were shocking to us, used as we were to green as the predominant plant color. There were numerous varieties of plants mixed in a wild exuberance of growth. They ranged from light, sky-blue to almost ultra-violet in color and stood up to thirty or forty feet in height.
As we wonderingly approached the garden, several of the plant-like organisms slowly moved to orient towards us. One particularly large tree analog had numerous tubular, flower-like structures that hung down from its multitude of branches. It slowly lifted them as we approached. The flowers gradually moved until they all pointed directly at us.
The things looked too much like projectile weapons for my comfort, and I motioned for everyone to stop and back up. As we departed, the farther tubes drooped to their original position, but those on our side of the tree kept pointing at us. There was a piece of a broken plastic crate that had been conveniently left on the floor of the dome, and Joe picked it up. He tossed it towards the tree, and the ‘flowers’ convincingly demonstrated that they were deadly.
As the plastic flew towards the tree, seeming to almost float in the lighter gravity, the closest flowers launched reddish, harpoon-like things from their tubular centers. The harpoons were attached to the flowers by a white, thin fiber. The things were able to shoot with accuracy, a few missed, but almost all of them bounced off the piece, knocking it to the ground.
The flowers retrieved their weapons by somehow sucking the fiber back, and in a few seconds, they were ready for action again. One of the last shooters had missed the target as it dropped, and the harpoon had embedded itself in the dome’s floor. The flower strained to pull it back, and the filament tightened until the entire branch was bent. It finally gave up and relaxed.
It was enough of a lesson for us. No doubt there were other organisms in that alien garden that were as dangerous. We weren’t interested in taking any chances, so we sheared off to check out the other cube structures.
We had no difficulty opening the doors of each; they were simply set up to be pulled open with a cable-like loop. That handle would work for both the Pugs, who had more or less human-like hands, and for the Pug-bears’ claws.
The first cube was full of packages of compressed wafers. We didn’t even try to guess their purpose, although Stormbreaker said the material looked like pemmican. Perhaps it was some sort of food supply. If it was for the aliens, it probably was meat. That’s all I’d seen them eat. Of course, there weren’t any suitable vegetables on Earth if the central garden was any indication.
The second cube was packed with padded cases that proved to be full of eggs. The outsides of the cases were marked in the Pugs cursive script and also in English. The labels were destination cities, many corresponding to the transporter heads we’d previously located.
The fact that they were co-marked in English was a nasty reminder that some of our fellows were quite ready to sell out our race. I browsed around a little bit, hoping to find some kind of a list of collaborators. I knew this was probably a vain hope, but it would have made it much easier to locate the people who’d been co-opted to help the Pugs. However, it turned out to be a fruitless effort.
Liz wanted to blow the eggs with one of the anti-matter bombs, but I wasn’t ready to give up on our search. It was proving informative, and information was what we were short of. I’d been playing catch-up ever since I stumbled into the transporter system, and I was sick of it, so I vetoed her idea.
“What I want to know,” said Rudy, “is why they are making the effort to transport the eggs. Are these eggs dormant in some way? And, why not simply send Pug-bears through and let them lay eggs in each location?”
“Maybe they don’t reproduce very quickly,” I said, but I knew that couldn’t be correct. The damned things had taken over at least fifteen planets based on the booklet we’d found. I thought they had to be very fecund. I desperately felt the need for more information.
We walked on to the next cube building. The door of this one was locked. We tried pulling on the loop, but it didn’t move. Tiring of this, I used the eraser-gun on the door to cut an irregular-shaped opening through the wall, dissolving the entire door in the process. We carefully entered the cube.
When my eyes had adapted to the dimly lit room, my hair practically stood on end. The place was packed with what appeared to be nuclear warheads. They looked like bombs and even had conventional human atom symbols on them. If I’d held the anti-matter beam on a little too long, the things might have gone off or released some nuclear material that could have proven deadly to us.
The implications of this stockpile were grim. There were enough weapons here to decimate the Earth. If the aliens could simply drop these things from orbit or even somehow launch them from Titan, humans would have no effective defense. The presence of the things also implied some form of spacecraft. They’d have to get them into position to drop on us somehow. I briefly wondered if there was a spaceship around somewhere, but I decided that I’d better focus on screwing up their plans.
We snooped around and examined the bombs. They might have had some form of proximity detonator on them, but we couldn’t recognize it.
At the rear of the room, I found another type of bomb. These were also nuclear, but they didn’t look aerodynamic. They had timers and were meant to be placed near their targets. The timers were exactly like the ones on the eraser-grenades, so I knew how to set them.
“Let’s check the next cubes and then set these things to go off,” I said.
“OK. If you’re sure we have the time to explore farther,” Rudy replied. His tone of voice indicated that he was doubtful about the idea of additional exploration.
“I don’t know how the aliens even get in here. The sergeant told us the place was full of them, so there might be a transporter in one of the other cubes or even a tunnel to the other domes,” I gestured vaguely at the transparent wall.
The clear dome now provided a view of Saturn, framed by jagged mountains and partially obscured by a light, patchy fog of some kind of vapor. The planet had risen while we were looking at the bombs. There was a slight mist of falling methane snow, but the view, while stunning, didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Instead, it looked cold and totally inhospitable to humans.
I glanced at the other domes. There were several in sight, and I thought I could see a large mass of creatures moving across the floor of the closest one. I decided that this was undoubtedly their main base.
The next cubical only contained some ragged human clothes. It looked like there had been some captives here, but they weren’t there now, and the only clue was the clothes, w appeared to have been torn off their bodies. We presumed the worst had happened to them.
We looked at each other sadly and went on. It was too late for those people. I felt a wave of anger wash through me. I had to make the aliens pay for their attempted invasion.