Page 28 of The Space Traveller's Lover
THE DAY BEFORE
THE FIRST MEETING
Oh yes, sir, I must be present at this meeting!
As dawn breaks, the last onlookers have finally started to move away from the farm fields after repeated calls by the police to clear the area. A murmur of protest and confusion spreads throughout the crowd as they gather and cross the surrounding waterlogged moat in the amphibious rescue boats.
An ARA search team, led by Air Marshal John Sanders, has flown in on helicopters and has set up its survey equipment in front of the farmhouse.
They have sent in three remote-controlled rescue robots, equipped with high-definition cameras and contamination detection instruments.
The robots advance, their tank-like wheels rolling onto every corner, photographing all areas and checking for booby traps, harmful chemicals, or radiation.
Their telescopic arms pick up any item, however small, and insert them into the leakproof leaden boxes fitted on their tops.
As one robot reaches Erin’s room, its cameras transmit the image of a broad light beam coming from the top of her bed.
Sanders instinctively sends the command to halt the robot and to sweep the entire room with its cameras.
Like packed collimated torches, a bright multi-shafted light column emanates from a slimline one-metre-high glass pyramid standing on the bed.
The brilliant light shafts hit a central point on the ceiling and then spread from there in concentric waves, shining in all the rainbow colours.
The expanding waves spread from the top centre point, down the walls, and over the floor and then crawl back up over themselves, dazzling with their pulsating interference patterns.
Professor Khan carefully inspects the fast-changing light display on his handheld pad. He is standing outside the farm gates with Sanders, Walker, and Sam, who sternly refused to return home with his family, insisting he could help.
Sam tries to get his head in front of Khan’s, and as he glimpses the images, he yells in excitement, “The bright light column!” Sam points at the collimated light shafts.
“Have you seen it before?” Khan asks in a dismissive tone.
“It is not harmful, by the way,” Sam quips.
“How do you know?” Walker asks sarcastically.
“I touched it. I went into it—the night she came into my cell.”
“Go on,” Walker orders Sam with an even deeper cynical tone.
“The night she came into my cell—before the hearing—images came out of thin air from within the light field, above the ground. They looked so real, like live holograms.”
“Images of what?”
“Their cities, their world, their planet.”
“What about this glass pyramid that seems to be creating the light column?” Khan asks.
Sam thinks hard, trying to remember if he ever saw any pyramid at that time.
“She didn’t have anything like that when she showed me the light column.” He ponders.
“Oh, this is nuts!” Walker sneers.
“I think … I think it must be another one of her gadgets,” Sam suggests.
Finally, as the bright reflections start to subside, Professor Khan can carefully inspect the glistening surface of the mysterious pyramid-shaped object coming into focus in his handheld pad. But he has no idea what it could be made of.
“We need to bring special equipment to retrieve this thing,” Khan concludes. “I’ll send a request to the ARA Navy for a specially shielded larger container. ”
“I can go into the farmhouse and take a closer look. I’m sure I’ll be all right.” Sam eagerly jumps in, realising in the middle of his sentence that he will never be allowed.
“I’m sorry, boy, but we need to follow the security procedures,” Khan scolds him, still glued to the images of the pyramid, zooming in and out.
“It could be dangerous … radioactive,” Walker warns.
“We’ve found no traces of radiation or dangerous chemicals,” Sanders intercedes, refuting the captain’s idea.
“See? Nothing to worry about,” Sam insists.
Captain Walker shakes his head, unconvinced, as he watches the line of remote-controlled robots carrying the steel boxes into the back of the shielded truck parked outside the farmhouse. “Yes, you would say that,” he grumbles, thinking hard about what to make of the obvious but implausible reality.
The captain’s troubled thoughts are interrupted by a wheezing ear-piercing sound as if a giant drill has been suddenly turned on.
They instinctively duck their heads when they see the swiftly gyrating pyramid shooting out of the farmhouse roof.
It surges up into the sky, and as it rotates, a dense haze gushes from its edges, forming a swirling trail around its body.
As it reaches a high altitude, its sharp nose veers towards the east and then disappears into the distance through an iridescent parabolic path.
“Well, I’ve never seen anything like it.” An astounded Sam breaks the glaring silence as everyone’s eyes are stuck on the dissipating trails in the sky.
“It could be going towards LA, towards the ARA headquarters,” Khan suggests.
“The ARA?” Sanders ponders.
“Well, she mentioned the ARA meeting tomorrow, remember?” Khan notes.
Khan’s words suddenly shake Sam up. The thought of meeting the culprits that had taken Erin makes him shiver in fear.
But if that would mean seeing Erin again, he is utterly determined to be at the meeting.
“Of course! So, we are clearly in the wrong place here! We must take the first plane to LA—like … right now.” Sam demands.
“We? What do you mean we ? Khan scolds him .
“Oh yes, sir, I must be present at this meeting!” Sam replies in a resolute tone. “I can be of help. I’m very close to Erin. She will listen to me.”
“Sam!” Walker intervenes. “You should respect Professor Khan’s judgement.”
But Sam keeps looking at Khan with an intense pleading gaze, sensing that the professor is on the verge of giving in.
“I’m going to this damned meeting! Who else knows Erin better than me?” Sam impatiently shouts, trying to push his luck.
Sam waits for a barrage of rejections, but Khan’s silence tells him he has won this fight.
“Come on, Sanders. Call the airport. Order that flight!” Professor Khan finally relents, looking at Sam with a searing gaze first that ultimately softens up as he can’t help but acknowledge Sam’s steadfast resolve.
“Oh, what nonsense. That weird object has probably fallen into the sea by now, and this stupid meeting is a complete washout,” Walker grumbles, but he is suddenly interrupted by the loud ringing of Sanders’s phone.
As Sanders answers, he turns on the loudspeaker and reaches out the handset into the middle of the group.
“Good morning, sir, Sergeant Gawk here from the ARA headquarters. An unidentified flying object has just dashed into the building through the skylight. It is very sleek, pyramid-shaped and glowing all the time. It went through all the doors, ripping them apart, vaporizing the flying debris and avoiding everyone in its path. We have evacuated the building with no casualties. We have located the object.”
“Where is it?” Sanders frowns, while Walker looks, with embarrassment, at the group’s stunned faces.
“It’s standing in the second floor’s planning room, sir, on one of the tables at the back … and it’s constantly buzzing.”
“Okay, Sergeant. Keep everyone away. Build a security ring around the building. We’ll be arriving in a few hours,” Sanders orders in a quick-firing outburst.
“Yes, sir!”
As the call terminates, they find themselves staring at one another, saying nothing but united in the realisation that there’s no point in continuing to deny that something beyond their control is taking over their lives—something unpredictable, incomprehensible, yet very real .
John Sanders hands over the search of the farm and calls the airport. The flight to take him, Professor Khan, and Sam Sheppard to the ARA headquarters will be ready in minutes.
All over the news channels, the numerous headlines cover the stories of Sam and Erin, the farmhouse’s terrifying events and mysterious findings.
The world is holding its breath in daunted anticipation of what the future may bring, and soon all sorts of conspiracy theories and end-of-the-world predictions abound.