Doctor Bert Francis Richardson leaned back in his chair, took a deep drink of his steaming honey-laced tea, and looked up into the star-filled sky. It was hard to believe that only a quarter inch of material lay between him and the airless void of Pluto's surface. The walls, ceilings, and floors of the base were constructed of Pfelninium-Carbon crystals, stronger than any metal, inexpensive to create, and, when in the presence of a particular ultrasonic harmonic tone, it radiates sufficient heat to eliminate the need for insulation, even in absolute zero. Bert was the only one of the Humans at Base Pluto-One who was old enough to remember the days before Pfelninium-Carbon, before the Graviton Near-Light Drive, before the arrival of the Belvons.
            The Belvons had first been detected by Base Luna-Twelve nearly 61 years ago. Their ship was badly crippled, its Tri-decatron FTL Drive hopelessly mangled, its Graviton Drive held together by ingenuity and luck. There were over 8,000 of them on board, suffering from malnutrition and the hardships of 300 years aboard a ship designed to carry a quarter their number for significantly shorter spans of time. Although none of them knew enough of their own physics to allow the re-invention of the Tri-decatron Drive they pushed Human science forward several hundred years, nearly overnight.
            Before the Belvons, it had taken the European Community 70 years to build twenty bases on Luna and five on Mars. And they had nearly driven themselves into bankruptcy to do that. Now, in less time than that Humanity had swarmed throughout the solar system, built hundreds of domed colonies and thousands of smaller bases similar to Base Pluto-One. The next two steps in Human-Belvon expansion were on the verge of commencing. Orbiting Terra and Mars, a fleet of colony ship waited to take a million colonists each on the years- or even decades-long trips to the nearest stars in hopes on finding new worlds to settle. Meanwhile, on Base Pluto-One the newly re-invented Graviton Communication Beacon was preparing to go operational and start searching the galaxy for other intelligent races. The Beacon itself was on Pluto's moon, Charon. Charon was never visible from the base. Its orbital period was the same as a Plutonian day; it remained forever overhead the same spot. This quirk worked well given certain unusual properties of the Beacon.
            Unlike the Graviton Drive, which could only achieve speeds near the speed of light, the Graviton Communication Beacon could send a stream of high-energy particles at 94.1 times the speed of light. It could still be thousands of years before a responce came, if one ever did, but Doctor Richardson was still thrilled at the idea of being here to start the Beacon. He took another deep drink of his tea and continued to watch the stars.

            Junior Researcher and resident computer expert Tod Hammon sat in his cubicle running the latest of a series of simulations of the Beacon. It wouldn't do to turn the thing on and have it create a spatial distortion that would tear Pluto and its moon, Charon, into microscopic bits of dust. It wasn't that anyone considered that likely; Richardson, Belmont and Frax'dor didn't even consider it possible, but Var'ju'ritt was the Base Commander so Hammon sat here day after day running simulations.
            Tod reached down and flipped a switch, activating the computer's built-in voice recorder. "Running simulation one hundred and fourty-seven, series gamma two, start-time oh-three-twenty-two," he said. He yawned then flipped the switch back off, thought for a moment and decided he should have done that in the reverse order.
Tod looked at the specifications for simulation one hundred and fourty-seven, series gamma two, and frowned. Two hours and fourteen minutes of number-crunching, which would only result in the same responce: Beacon Operating Properly. Tod's frown suddenly turned upward. no reason to waste the time, he thought. Might as well do what all true computer experts do best. Hack.
            In a few keystrokes he activated his hacker module which, when not in use, appeared to be a near-empty sub-directory called Letters-Home. Once activated it ran automatically ran several child processes. The first sent an energy pulse to the window in the cubicle's door. Or, more to the point, what appeared to be a window. It was actually a flat crystaline holographic display that when powered down was a normal window. When powered up however, it showed a near-perfect holographic image of whatever Tod wanted it to show. In this case it showed him sitting at the terminal, carefully monitoring the progress of the simulation. A second process warned him if anyone was in the corridor outside so he could shut down his activities if the door opened. A third process shut down selected security programs and rerouted snoop attempts from his actual terminal to a memory block that contained the output of the current simulation.
            A few sub-processes later, he started in his hack with the usual rounds. He liked to start by reading all of the "secure" mail that arrived for Belmont and Var'ju'ritt. It was nearly always dry, governmental, interdepartmental memo about this-and such. As far as Tod was concerned, none of it really needed to be secured in the first place. Next he ran the replays of Neruxvo's latest session of Gart'polix, a Belvon computer game. Neruxvo was an amateur hacker himself and liked to play his game while he was supposed to be calculating the proper alignments for the Beacon's 1600 antennas. Tod was pleased with his progress: he had finally defeated the Norv on level twenty-three and found the key to a prison cell which might be the one that held Vice-Princess Gil'da'ru on level twenty-seven. Tod reran the battle sequence and laughed when he realized what had killed the Norv; Norvs melted when you poared alcoholic beverages on them. After that, Tod moved on to what was generally the highlight of his hacking trips: Janice Ralely's diary. She was having affairs with two of the other women, three of the men, and three Belvons, one of each sex. And she was very descriptive in her daily writings. Almost too descriptive.
            After reading the past four days' worth, plus a few of his favorite passages from months past, he typed Dear Mom. This allowed him to check up on the simulation without interrupting his hack. Another twenty-three minutes to go. He might as well just end the hack and go get a bite to eat. Nah, he thought. Plenty of time to try out the new worm process he'd been working on. Dear Uncle Robert, he typed to start the process. Tod thought this was appropriate given his opinion of his uncle.
In theory, his new worm process should "dig" down into the myriad sub-directories, "unearth" any protected files, "eat" through their protection, and let Tod sift through whatever was inside. He didn't have to wait long before he found out it worked. He was glad now that he hadn't eaten, he would have stained his uniform pants if he had. He didn't want to believe it, but the more the worm dug, the more evidence there was. Send Letter-Home.Uncle-Robert.November-First TO Printer ID#0143. He had to let the others know.
            While the printer spit out page after page, Tod sent Priority Two messages to the other Humans on the base, transmitting the messages to Charon where they would be bounced off the Beacon and would therefore appear to originate from off-planet. The Priority Two rating was enough to warrant immediate attention but not enough to cause Var'ju'ritt to be automatically notified. By the time he finished, the printer had stopped and the worm had "returned home." Tod typed Sincerely Tod to shut down the hack module, grabbed the print-outs and headed out the door towards the cafeteria. Closing the door, he thought, God, I hope I didn't leave any tracks this time.

            He did.

            Var'ju'ritt looked up from the screen with a look that would have caused the average Terran Colonial Marine to shake in his, or her boots. The screen was a routine snoop module that monitored all non-secured printer dumps.
"Herk'i, I want you to get to Hammon's cubicle and kill him. If you can make it look like some sort of accident, do so, but don't consider it a priority."
            Herk'i checked his weapon blindly as his eyes scanned another screen. "I'm afraid it's too late for that," he started, "He's in route to the Mess Hall. In fact, there's a number of targets moving in that direction." Weapon in hand, he had slipped easily into the military mindset that was his true heritage.
            "Then go there, and fast, you Bewr'gu Cat-Thing, before one of them decides to signal Earth." Turning back to his terminal without waiting to see Herk'i leaving, Var'ju'ritt started shutting down the communications sub-systems of the base. Maybe it's not too late, he thought. Maybe the Humans won't find out the truth. Of course, they won't he chided himself. No Human child who should still be in school was going to single-handedly pull apart a hundred year old plan in the space of one afternoon. Var'ju'ritt turned and looked at Herk'i's screen. One Human was not in the Cafeteria. He turned back to his own terminal and send a message to Vina'ret.

            Dr. Richardson pick up his tea cup. It was so sweet of Vina'ret to bring him one as if she had known he wanted some just at that moment. She was a nice girl. Reminded him quite a bit of his niece Angie. She smiled at him over her shoulder as she walked through a doorway. He took a sip of his tea. He could taste the honey. Just the way Angie used to make it, with too much honey. As he was thinking this, the tea cup slid from his grip. He was dead before it shattered on the Pfelninum-Carbon crystal floor.

            "Oh, come off of it Tod. You can't really expect us to buy thos crap, can you? They've been here for over half a century and now suddenly they're planning to cart off the entire Human Race for use in their slave colonies. And using the very colony ships they helped us build.
            "Do you realize how many flaws are in this stupid story of yours? They can't be signaling their homeworld; it was destroyed in the unexpected and as yet unexplained super-nova of their sun in 1994. The only Belvons alive today are the decendants of the handful of tourists aboard the cruise ship that staggered into Earth orbit before either of us were born.
            "You have obviously been sitting in your cubicle entirely too long. But don't worry. You'll be getting a nice long vacation far away from that cubicle soon enough."
            "Belmont, you have obviously not been listening to a word I've said. And if you don't start listening soon, we may all get a nice long vacation on slave colony Vaer'ki'lopi."
            Belmont was about to respond when he noticed Frax'dor, Herk'i and several others coming into the cafeteria. "I'm glad you're here, Frax'dor. You should here the pile of garbage this moron," he stabbed a finger in the air in Tod's direction, "has been shoveling."
            Frax'dor smiled coldly, something Tod realized that Belvons' faces seem well designed to do. "It is not garbage, my friend. And he is most certainly not a moron." As he said this he drew a large, ugly looking weapon out from behind his back and fire a volley of shots that tore Belmont in half. The cafeteria quickly descended into a chaotic storm of deafening shots and shredding bodies.
            Tod crawled towards the door he had come in, trying to ignore the pain from his left leg, broken when a table had exploded in front of him. As he was nearing the doorway he saw Janice standing in front of Herk'i saying "Herk'i, dear, you can't-" Apparantly he could. Janice's head became a dark stain on the cafeteria wall. Then Herk'i turned towards Tod. He lowered the barrel of his weapon. Then the top of his head disappeared. Tod, surprised that it wasn't his own head disappearing, looked back towards the doorway.

            Engineer Byll Lanison's job was to keep Base Pluto-One in perfect working order. And he was good at his job. He knew every centimeter of the base intimately. So when the Belvons had opened fire he had known just what to do. He'd dove to the floor under one of the tables, putting himself at least temporarily out of sight. Then he'd popped a floor panel out, dropped into the crawlspace below, replaced the panel, and headed for the nearest airlock.
            He reached the airlock in almost less time than it would have taken had he been walking through the corridors of the base. He grabbed his Zero-Environment Suit and donned it in under three minutes. He went outside about once a week for an inspection of the base's exterior shell and sub-systems, but he knew that if he'd ever had an emergency out there he'd have had to get there quickly. The training paid off. He was outside and beyond their sensor range before they even knew he was missing.
            Byll knew that he still had a decent chance of getting out of this mess. He could handle himself well enough in a ZE Suit to make it to the supply-dump site for the planned Base Pluto-Two. There'd be enough oxygen to keep him alive while he assembled an airlock and a transmitter. He had been reading some of Hammon's printouts when the Belvons came in and they were stuffed in the pocket of his overalls. I hope its sufficient to convince Earth of what's really going on out here.

            Medical Technician Lisa Sanchez stood in the doorway holding an antique revolver. She reached down pulled him through the doorway and slammed the door. Tod just stared at her as she lifted him up and helped him hobble down the corridor.
            When Lisa noticed his stare, she said, "If you have any ideas on how to get us out of here, now's the time to speak up. And stop stareing at me."
            "Sorry. It's just- I mean- back there..." he trailed off.
            "Yeah, I saved your life," she said.
            "I know but why are you carrying that old gun," Tod asked.
            "I grew up in Detroit and Cleveland. Old habits die hard, I guess," she replied. She continued, "but at the moment I'd rather be in Detroit, or Cleveland. So do you know how to get out of trouble, or just into it."
            "Get us to the Simulation Cubicle. I can at least buy us some time to think."
            "Wouldn't that be one of the first places they'd look for you."
            "Not if its empty," he replied cryptically.
            Moments later they reached Tod's cubicle and Lisa sat him down in the chair while she closed the door. The sound of weapons firing was echoing throughout the base now, and some of the sources were getting closer. Tod booted up his system. When it finished its self-diagnostics, the longest 18 seconds of Tod's life, he typed Dear Dad.
            "This is a hell of a time to be writing home," Lisa very nearly screamed.
            "I'm not. I'm saving our butts." As he said it the energy pulse activated the "window" and the inside went black.
            "Que la chingada," she whispered in her second language. "What did you do?"
            "The window's a F.C.H.D. From the outside it looks like nobody's in here." Tod turned back to his terminal and typed Dear Mom so he could monitor what was going on in the rest of the system. He stared at the screen dumbfounded. He had left the simulation running; it was done now.
            The message on the screen was in blinking red letters. It read, Warning: Current Specifications Will Result In A Spatial-Temporal Distortion Of Magnitude 16.
            "I've got an idea," Tod said. "Ever crawl through an airduct?"
            "Not since I was six."
            "If we can get to an airlock we might just make it," aid Tod as he turned back to the terminal and started to type.

=> Activate Beacon
Beacon is Activated.

=> Set Specifications.{current} = Specifications.{sim-147/G2}
Working.

Specifications Set.

=> Transmit ("Have a nice day.")
Warning: Current Specifications Will Result In A Spatial-Temporal Distortion Of Magnitude 16.

Abort?

=>Override and Proceed
Overridden.

Are You Sure?

=>Yes.
Transmitting.

Warning: Spatial-Temporal Disruption Of Magnitude 16 Will Occur In 26.3 Minutes.

            "Let's go," Tod said.

            Byll felt the tremble even through the insulated boots of his ZE Suit. What the hell, he thought as he turned around. He could no longer see the base; it had slipped below his horizon. The explosion however came well above the horizon. From the size of it he was very glad there was no atmosphere to carry the sound and shock waves from it. The shock waves coming through the crust were enough to knock him onto his backside. He quickly checked the suit's integrity. Seeing it was intact he looked back in the direction of the base. As the yellow-green glow faded, he stood up and thought, there's still time then; we can still save ourselves. The last of the glow had disappeared. Byll turned his back on the devastation.
            And as he continued to walk slowly away from the ruins of the base, he watched the horizon, where, due to his motion, he saw Charon rising.

© copyright 1992, 2007, 2009 by Michael J. Ahlers.  All rights reserved.