Guided By The Stars Is Alice by Leslie Stringer - HTML preview

CHAPTER 10

You think this is the end? It’s where it

all starts…

The elevator shudders to a halt at level minus thirty-six. The panel inside the elevator that indicates the floor number flickers from minus thirty-six then minus thirty-seven and back to minus thirty-six over and over .

A minute later the roof lights start to flicker until they go off altogether.

Small lights illuminate each level inside the tall lift shaft. The shaft is designed for two elevators that would normally pass each other.

Backlit by the lights in the lift shaft John kneels and looks down though the hatch on the roof into the darkness of the lift.

JOHN: “There are no doors or floor landings, you will all have to get up here onto the roof and then climb up or down the lift shaft”.

The crew all make their way up onto the elevators roof. Tombs is first out and while helping the others he looks up the lift shaft, TOMBS: “Long way to climb back up”

JOHN: “Look down the other shaft”

Tombs and Ghost lean out and look down the lift shaft, GHOST: “Looks like we stopped about three floors from the bottom. Are those elevator doors down there?”

JOHN: “It looks like it. I want to go down, not up. I don’t think there is anything up there apart from possible death and Melman with a gun.

Lux?”

LUX: “I think Melman wants us all dead, or non-working. I didn’t know this lift shaft went below ground level, he kept a lot from me”.

The crew all climb down to the bottom of the lift shaft.

Tombs tries to open the doors.

TOMBS: “Porter, you try”

Porter tries to open the doors. But they remain closed.

LUX: “Let me try”

The doors creak and stain and metallic ripping and shearing can be heard as they slowly open.

Dizzy standing next to John nudges him.

DIZZY: “Can you give me some of her upgrades”

John smiles at Dizzy

JOHN: “probably someday”

Lux forces a gap in the doors just wide enough for one person to get though. They all climb though and find themselves in a small round brightly lit room with a spiral staircase in the middle going down.

JOHN: “Porter, you go first since you can scan ahead”

PORTER: “No problem”

They all follow Porter down the stairs. The stairs end in another small brightly lit circular room just a few meters wide. The crew have to jump down half a meter because the stairs are not attached to the floor. A small open control panel door is in the floor. John kneels down and looks into the panel.

JOHN: “These controls, they look familiar”

John pulls on a lever and pushes some buttons. Nothing happens. He stands up and looks around at his crew then shrugs his shoulders.

Suddenly, the floor starts to move downwards slowly. A minute later the floor stops. Then a hissing sound is heard above as a roof slides across the opening above them hiding the stairs above and enclosing the crew.

LUNA: “This is an airlock”

GHOST: “Where is the airlock door?”

Another hiss and a semi-circular door in the wall is revealed behind a sliding screen with a clear glass porthole in its upper half and a small control panel below the window.

John looks though the porthole.

JOHN: “Looks kinder familiar”

TOMBS: “Try those controls, see if they open the door”

John pushes away at the buttons and the airlock door swishes into the roof.

JOHN: “Open sesame!”

They all walk into a dimly lit semi-round cream coloured corridor about four meters across.

LUNA: “These something about this that feels strangely like I’ve been here before”

JOHN: “Didn’t you tell me once if we pass into a Paradox our past memory could get messed up”

LUNA: “Yes”

They all start walking down the corridor which seems to be curved.

JOHN: “Can these memories come back?”

LUNA: “Yes, they can, but in bits and pieces”

John stops, the crew all stop with him. He looks at a panel in the wall and taps it with his knuckle.

JOHN: “Alice? This looks familiar, I’m not sure why”.

DIZZY: “Is this Alice”

John opens the small panel door and presses against various areas on the LCD screen. A large door opens sideways revealing glasslike window.

Porter looks out and downwards through the window.

PORTER: “We seem to be on an upper floor of a round building inside a large cave?”

Dizzy gazes through the window.

DIZZY: “This looks a bit like Alice, but it’s not. Did Alice ever have a sister ship?”

John looks around at Dizzy with a questioning look.

JOHN: “I can’t remember where Alice came from. Luna?”

LUNA: “My minds blank. Let’s figure out how to get outta here first, and off this planet, away from Melman, before we’re dead”.

Tombs finds a floor hatch in the corridor and starts to open it.

TOMBS: “A way down to the lower decks via a maintenance tube”

JOHN: “Let’s go then”

They all go down a short ladder in the maintenance tube. The exit is a large oval opening without a door. John starts to walk down a wide corridor they are all in.

LUNA: “Why you are going that way John?”

JOHN: “I know this way”

After a short walk they reach double doors which glide open when John is almost in front of them. The crew all follow John onto the star-ships flight deck.

Luna walks over to a flat transparent console and puts her hands flat down on the top of its surface. She gently rubs her hands across its surface like she is massaging skin.

LUNA: “This is like Alice when we first got her”

JOHN: “This is like Alice when we stole her. And before we upgraded all her systems. Paradox can do some strange things”.

TOMBS: “How do we know it’s not reality?”

LUX: “I heard Melman talk about something he called a timeline observation and subterfuge displacement device”

JOHN: “Yes, that’s what you use to test adjustments in the timeline to see what a predicted outcome would be after a modified historical change”

LUNA: “The ship is fully functional and ready to go. We just need to spin up the core”.

GHOST: “What that’s noise, like a scraping, and banging, above us”

The crew all turn to look at the holographic camera display, TOMBS: “What the fuck”

JOHN: “Luna, external cameras”

GHOST: “Didn’t you expect that”

The crew observe more than a dozen droids and robots with various industrial cutting tools trying to cut into the roof of the star ship.

LUX: “I guess Melman wants us all dead”

JOHN: “Dizzy! Give me auxiliary battery power”.

John sits down in front of a console and starts to press away with his fingers and waving his hands at various places across the console that starts to light up.

DIZZY: “You have all she’s got”

JOHN: “Porter, can you scan ahead and see where this cave goes”

The noise of powerful industrial power tools cutting into the star ship gets louder.

PORTER: “Goes for three kilometres, gets tight around halfway, cannot see an exit”

JOHN: “There has to be a way out”

Ghost nervously looks upwards.

GHOST: “Their cutting through John!!”

JOHN: “Crew!! Without the core we have no damping field, this will be a bumpy trip, hang onto something. Dizzy! I don’t mean Porter”.

DIZZY: “Ok”

With John operating the helm, the star ship lifts up off the ground just a few inches.

JOHN: “Hang on!”

Then, suddenly the star ship jumps upwards into the caves rocky roof mangling and crushing the droids on the top of Alice. John keeps Alice pushed hard against the roof as he manoeuvres the ship slowly away from the caves back wall.

With electrical sparks, buzzing and smoking debris, the destroyed droids and their destructive tools roll off the lightly curved roof and fall to the ground.

The star ship carefully navigates the dimly lit cave clearing the walls by centimetres. Ahead a dark cube shape the size of a house can be seen seamlessly merging from the cave wall.

PORTER: “I’m detecting a large moving mass ahead of us. It seems to be coming out of a side cave”.

DIZZY: “What is that?”

JOHN: “Dizzy, give me spectral analysis, enhance forward cameras”

LUX: “That is a cave borer, used in the mines”

The cave borer raises various mechanical arms at Alice with a toothed grabbing devices, pulverisers, and shears attached.

JOHN: “Well, it’s in our way. Luna, bring the atmospheric engines online”.

LUNA: “IN a cave?”

JOHN: “Tombs! Do we have any weapons installed?”

TOMBS: “Nothing”

JOHN: “Luna, bring the atmospheric engines online. In the cave”.

Alices venetian atmospheric engine vents open to reveal radiant blue swirling hot gas licking around her engine ventricles. John turns Alice around 160 degrees and lands Alice on her belly with her nose pushed up against the rocky cave wall.

John angles the engines at the cave borer and runs the engines at maximum power for a few minutes, he then turns the engines to idle.

Ghost is looking at the view screen tapping her fingers on a desk console waiting for the black smoke to clear. The smoke clears revealing the borer, which is now a burnt-out melted mess.

GHOST: “We killed it! Look at the state of that, even the caterpillar tracks are melted off”.

John raises Alice of the ground and turns her back around. Alice slowly makes her way along the cave. The dim wall lights illuminating the cave are getting fewer.

JOHN: “Can someone put the floodlights on, it’s getting darker now”

Alices floodlights brighten her path as they come to the end of the cave which finishes as a solid rock wall with a large pond of water at its base.

LUNA: “I don’t think open sesame will work this time John”

JOHN: “Porter, what do scan show”

PORTER: “Solid rock ahead of us, Solid rock both sides”

John manoeuvres Alice over the pool of water.

JOHN: “Scan down”

PORTER: “Oh! its deep, it goes down about 160 meters”

JOHN: “It’s not a puddle then”

John lowers Alice into the pond. As Alice submerges her idling atmospheric engines boil the surrounding water, steam bubbles raise to the ponds surface and burst. Bits of broken oily droids that were still on Alices roof now float on top of the pond.

Alice sinks to the ponds bottom until there is a gentle bump felt by all the crew.

TOMBS: “What now?”

JOHN: “Porter, what’s ahead of us now”

PORTER: “Well would you believe it, nothing but open water”

John navigates Alice out of the cave and into the open water.

TOMBS: “I wonder what’s waiting for us topside”

John Smiles at Tombs then uses his radio implant to contact Veyah.

JOHN: ” Veyah, we need Voodoo here. Scan for our coordinates.

Guardian shields on full, and shields around this ship when we surface”.

As Alice breaks the surface of the ocean John throttles up Alices atmospheric engines. Hovering above Alice VooDoo is waiting. The two ships take off into earths sky, VooDoo silently, and Alice with roaring engines.

JOHN: “Ghost. Anything following us on your screens?”

GHOST: “I saw something, but as soon as Voodoo showed up it went”

DIZZY: “Core spun up, ready to go”

JOHN: “Porter, plot a direct course for Mars”

PORTER: “Course sent to your console John”

JOHN: “Bringing main engines online, atmospheric engines off, setting speed to L10, hitting the go button”

Alice swiftly accelerates, then suddenly the lights flicker and go off.

Emergency lights come on and the core can be herd shutting down with a slowing down whining noise.

LUNA: “What’s going on?”

TOMBS: “I’ll go down and check the core”

While Tombs makes his way to the room where the core is he finds Lux G sitting against a bulkhead wall, her eyes are open, and she is motionless.

TOMBS: “Lux, Lux”

Tombs gets onto his comms,

TOMBS: “John, I found Lux G down here near the core room, she’s not moving”.

JOHN: “I’ll come down”

John goes down to have a look at Lux G. He has a device with him, he briefly scans her.

JOHN: “She’s shut down. I’m detecting a range shutdown module. I guess she never she had one”.

TOMBS: “What that do?”

JOHN: “It prevents her leaving earth, it shut her down once we left earth’s upper atmosphere. I guess Melman fitted to her without her knowledge. I’m not sure I can fix her. We will have to Cryo-store her for now on VooDoo”.

John goes back to the ships bridge.

JOHN: “Ghost, anything on radar?”

GHOST: “Nothing at all”

Alice has a self-contained lifeboat. A shortcut from the helm to the core is to go through the lifeboat accommodation. Across Alice’s internal speaker system Tombs makes an announcement.

TOMBS: “John! You better come to the lifeboat”.

John gets up and makes his way down to the lifeboat. He sees that Tombs has his faithful J8 gun with him.

JOHN: “What’s that’s for?”

Tombs says nothing, he just raises his J8 and points it at something that John cannot yet see.

JOHN: “Oh fuck! Now that is a surprise”.

TOMBS: “They were locked in”

Kneeling on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs are two aliens, a male and female Craven.

TOMBS: “They surrendered to me, but I thought as a precaution”

JOHN: “Taking a precaution is fine. So, I guess you guys have been on board all along?”

CRAVEN-MAN: “20 of your earth years”

Luna and the rest of the crew arrive; they stand behind John and Tombs.

LUX: “I’ve seen these Cravens with Melman. I don’t know what their relationship is with him”.

CRAVEN-WOMAN: “We are surgeons, brain surgeons. We look after Melman”.

CRAVEN-MAN: “Melman is not as he appears, he is not human, he is an Endallian”.

LUNA: “I’ll put two and two together, and have a good guess that Melmans brain is Endallian, in a human body”

The Cravens look at each other and nod. They answer together.

CRAVENS: “That is correct”

JOHN: “An Endallian, in a human body, that would make any Endallian angry. How did this happen?”

CRAVEN-MAN: “We followed the Endallian ship that tracked you down when your spaceship attempted to jump to another galaxy 20 years ago. Since the Endallian usually cause death and destruction wherever they are, and that means body parts for our survival. It looked like the Endallian’s were trying to attack you. His plan to stop your planned voyage was not working, so he rammed your ship, Melman is a high ranking Endallian who was assigned to stop you.”

CRAVEN-WOMAN: “He destroyed your ship and his own ship in the process. We, being Cravens, searched the wreckage for dead bodies and body parts that we could use for ourselves”.

CRAVEN-MAN: “We found Melman barely alive in the wreckage.

Because of our great surgical knowledge, and only with good intention, that we help anyone we find injured”

Dizzy whispers to Porter,

DIZZY: “With good intentions, making sure the body’s are cold and dead first before they dismember them”

CRAVEN-WOMAN: “We had a brain-dead male human in stock”.

Luna exclaims her feelings verbally about the term that the Endellians just used,

LUNA: “In stock?”

The cravens smile at each other like they felt they had reached a level of achievement with their brain transplant surgery never done before.

CRAVEN-WOMAN: “Yes. The only way we could save him was to transplant his brain into the human.”

CRAVEN-MAN: “It was the first time we had done this Alien species to Alien species transplant”.

CRAVEN-WOMAN: “Melman has kept us prisoners in case he needs further surgery”.

TOMBS: “That’s why he didn’t blast us out of the sky. That why we are still here. He wants the Cravens alive”.

JOHN: “Ghost, keep an eye on these two”

CRAVENS: “We won’t be any trouble; we just want to go home to Craven”

TOMBS: “I’m sure you’re both ok, it’s just a precaution until we can work stuff out”

Luna pulls John to one side to talk to him,

LUNA: “We can’t go to Mars, Melman we follow us because of the Cravens”

JOHN: “I have an idea. We will leave the lifeboat with the Cravens aboard in the rings of Saturn. The radiation belt should hide it nicely.

Then under cover of Voodoo’s stealth shield we set off for Mars to upgrade Alice, and then set a trap for Melman”

Porter sneaks up behind John and Luna and leans in, PORTER: “Sounds like a plan”

JOHN: “Porter”

PORTER: “Yes”

JOHN: “Fix the problem with the core”

Luna smiles at John, John winks back,

PORTER: “Eh, oh, ok”

JOHN: “Let me know when you’ve finished the diagnosis”

LUNA: “What do you intend to do John?”

JOHN: “Drop the Cravens off at Saturn, and go straight to Mars as soon as Porter has fixed the core”

Porter suddenly appears smiling broadly holding a piece of twisted flat bar metal. He hands it to John.

PORTER: “Core should work now, this was jammed in the cooling valve, the core would never cool down and spin up to reach operating temperature”

Porter hands the metal to John. John starts to look at it, but Luna takes the metal bar from him and looks it over.

LUNA: “Melmans way of ensuring Alice didn’t go too far”

JOHN: “Looks that way. Let’s go to Saturn. Veyah, you on comm?

VEYAH: “Yes John”

JOHN: “Bring Voodoo abroad, cargo bay one, set a course for Saturn’s rings. The Encke Gap”.

PORTER: “Why the Encke Gap”

JOHN: “It’s in the middle of the rings around Saturn. The rocky ice Debris there is a bit unpredictable. I’m not going to make access easy for Melman to track down the lifeboat and the Craven surgeons onboard. The end could be insight, and an end to these paradoxes and creases in time”.

LUNA: “Dizzy, get back to flight control and plot a course for Saturn’s Encke Gap”

DIZZY: “Right away”

Alice acerates quicky away to Saturn. The star-ship glides to a stop over Saturn’s north pole. Dizzy, who is piloting Alice, calmly leans across her transparent console. The console lights up and glow and gently flashes in the places where she slides her fingers and taps away to make some course changes.

Alice gracefully changes direction and swoops into the yellow atmosphere of Titan. Dizzy steers close to the surface of the moon and

goes through an ice geyser spraying hail thousands of meters into space that can be herd tinkering on the hull inside the spaceship.

DIZZY: “Tinkle, tinkle little moon”

PORTER: “I think its twinkle, twinkle little star”

Dizzy briefly looks around at Porter then back at her console, DIZZY: “Tinkle, tinkle little moon, we will be at the Encke Gap very soon…”

Porter listens to Dizzy’s rhyme, but does not look at he, he just slowly cross’s his head in recognition and smiles,

The star-ship heads upwards and out out of titan yellows clouds pulling some yellow mist with it as she makes for the Encke Gap rings.

DIZZY: “John. Where at the edge of the Encke Gap”

JOHN: “Ok Dizzy, find somewhere to hide away the lifeboat”

DIZZY: “Scanning…”

Dizzy’s blue eye turns yellow just like her other eye as she concentrates while she scans her console,

DIZZY: “Here John”

JOHN: “Tombs. Ghost, can you launch the lifeboat and tuck it away.

Make it look hidden”.

GHOST: “On to it. Come on Tombs”

Ghost and Tombs make their way off the star ships bridge and down to the lowest deck to prepare the lifeboat to be hidden in a place in Saturn’s rings called the Encke Gap. On their way they collect their faithful J8

guns.

They stop at the locked and closed air lock doors that lead to the detachable lifeboat section of Alice.

Tombs keys in a code on the lifeboat door entry panel. A voice command asks to scan his eyes. Code and scan accepted they both enter the air lock and the lifeboat.

Ghost goes directly to a small wall console and starts it up, Tombs stands next to her keeping guard. The 2 Cravens quickly appear to ask what is going on.

FIRST CRAVEN: “Are we being released now?”

TOMBS: “If you stay with us we could all be dead”

SECOND CRAVEN: “Melman would want us alive!”

GHOST: “Melman wants us dead. If Melman finds you with us he would kill us all. If you are on your own he will come for you both. You may survive”.

FIRST CRAVEN: “You’re setting a trap”

GHOST: “You’ll be comfortable here. There is plenty of provisions”.

Ghost nods at Tombs and they leave.

As the lifeboat air lock doors close the craven’s protest.

FIRST and SECOND CRAVEN: “You’re using us to set a trap”.

Ghost and Tombs look though the observation windows in the closed doors at the Cravens.

GHOST: “Did you see that craven looking me up and down”

TOMBS: “It’s because he liked the look of your body”

GHOST: “Really?”

TOMBS: “Yeah, like what your body would look like with his head on it”

Ghost makes some adjustments on a wall console that launches the lifeboat and pushes the “COMMIT LAUNCH LIFEBOAT” button.

GHOST: “Not sure I like Cravens”

Tombs laughs,

They watch as the lifeboats retro rockets fire and the craft moves away from Alice into one of the icy and rocky rings of Saturn. Ghost pushes another button which closes the outer lifeboat bay doors onboard Alice.

Sitting at Alices helm John watches on the holographic screen as the lifeboat manoeuvres into position within Saturn’s rings. Its retrorockets firing off until it is still amongst the ice and rocks.

JOHN: “Dizzy, Set course for Mars, directly for the base”

DIZZY: “On our way”

Dizzy brings up a screen on her console and plots a course, with a few taps on the console made by Dizzy Alices powers up and away towards Mars.

JOHN: “Ghost, contact base and let them know we are on our way”

GHOST: “I’m looking forward to seeing Maria and Frank”

JOHN: “Me too”

Minutes later Alice is in a low orbit around Mars.

JOHN: “Ghost, anything on comms”

GHOST: “Nothing, strangely quiet”

JOHN: “Dizzy, take us to the base, directly in front of the mountains main hanger”

Alices swoops down and hovers a few meters above Mars gravel and rocky surface, directly in front of where the mountain’s main hanger should be.

DIZZY: “Touch down?”

JOHN: “Yes, but keep the drive spun up”

John gets up from his console and goes over to where Ghost is sitting at her console. John taps away on her console and looks at Ghost. Ghost looks up at John.

GHOST: “Nothing, silence”

JOHN: “Looks like I’m going to have to knock on the front door”

TOMBS: “This could be a trap John”

JOHN: “Then keep a J8 looking over my shoulder”

TOMBS: “You’re going outside”

JOHN: “We are. Get your suit on”.

John and Tombs go down to the lower deck airlock outer room and put light duty spacesuits on. They both enter the airlock and go down steps to the surface of Mars.

They take a short walk over to where the Mars base mountain hanger door should had been. John feels the rocky mountain surface of the wall of granite, and then starts kicking around the floor where the bottom of the hanger door should be.

Where John has been kicking the rocky gravel around its reveals a metallic door seal, he points it out to Tombs. Tombs nods back to confirm Johns finding. Tombs activates his J8 gun into standby mode. The gun displays ACTIVE SAFE MODE on it’s built in LCD screen.

The hanger door unexpectedly starts to slowly open upwards. Tombs and John both take a step backwards. Tomb’s sets his gun to “FULLY LIVE”

them Tombs starts to bang the gun against the ground. Joins looks around at Tombs only to see him now fumbling around with the J8 gun. Tombs shows John the LCD readout. The guns show’s “ERROR 99

DISABLED”.

The hanger is open enough to see inside. John looks around. A figure inside the hanger in a spacesuit is standing directly in front of him. Frank activates his space helmet communicator from his remote console wrist band.

FRANK: “John, Tombs?”

Frank walks out the hanger, bangs his space helmet against Johns, and hugs John, then walks over to Tombs and punches him in the arm in a friendly manner,

FRANK: “How are you, Tombs?”

FRANK: “John!”

JOHN: “Fucking hell Frank, I thought for a second you were going to evaporate me”

Frank hugs John again and then Tombs then stands back.

FRANK: “No! I wouldn’t do that. But we don’t get many people just turn up in an unidentified spaceship and then knock on the front door.

Bring your ship into the dock”.

JOHN: “Did you hear that, Luna?”

LUNA: “Bringing Alice into dock John”

Luna manoeuvres Alice slowly into the dock. Alice hovers just a few centimetres above the ground with her anti-gravity emitters glowing and slowing down as her landing legs gently come out of the fuselage and settle onto the dock floor.

Frank actives the pressurised ventilation system to fill the dock with breathable air. Frank, John, and Tombs remove their space helmets. The main ramp of the spaceship comes down and the crew disembark. Maria who was watching everything though the main air lock window joins them all.

TOMBS: “Did you shut down my J8?”

FRANK: “Yeah, remotely. For my safety, Tombs”

As they all walk over to the airlock Luna notices her old spaceship in the corner.

LUNA: “You been looking after my ship Frank”

FRANK: “Maria takes it out now and then, working 100 percent”

Maria walks over to John and puts her arm though his slightly guiding him away from the main group. Maria and John smile broadly at each other.

MARIA: “John, you know this is a paradox”

JOHN: “Alice has never been here before, has she”

Maria looks back at Alice.

MARIA: “Never seen her before, first time here. I’m glad you and the crew are safe”.

John takes mental notes of all the stored technical equipment up against the walls in the corridors of the Mars base as they all go to the recreation area. Maria invites them all to sit down.

MARIA: “Food and drinks? I’ll get the droids to take your orders”.

Six droids come and take food and drink orders from the crew.

FRANK: “What’s happening John?”

JOHN: “Looks like we are in a paradox. First of all, this Alice does not have the tools we need, like the TMG I saw in the corridor back there, turret guns etc”.

FRANK: “How did you know we had all that?”

JOHN: “I saw the stuff in the corridors. They’re on our other Alice, your Droids fitted them here originally”.

Frank looks puzzled.

FRANK: “On the other Alice? I haven’t seen this one or the other”.

JOHN: “Which is this Alice, but an earlier one, but the same one later on. Frank, look, this is a paradox. The TMG and stuff is here because you have not fitted it yet”.

FRANK: “Yeah, I get that part”

MARIA: “I understand John. Frank, do you trust me?”

FRANK: “Of course I do my love. John, how urgent is this fitout?”

JOHN: “Very urgent”

MARIA: Give me instructions, and I get a hundred droids on the case ASAP”

JOHN: “Frank? sure thing. You’re gonna be here a few days now, tell me the story”.

The crew all settle down for dinner and John explains to Frank and Maria the story about how they came back from the other side of the universe and were somehow transported into a similar but different realm (Paradox), and that Melman (who is a xxx) was controlling earth and wanted all the crew dead, and that they had all narrowly escaped.

He explained how he had set a trap for Melman using the cravens as bait.

After dinner the crew all go to their cabins for a well-deserved rest.

On the second day John goes to the huge hanger to see how things are going on Alice, he goes up the ramp and onto the cargo deck and nearly gets knocked over by a yellow droid.

DROID: “Excuse me sir”

John jumps out of the way as lots of busy droids are carrying tools, parts and making modifications and changes to Alice. He goes down the ramp and runs his hand along Alices new paint job which Maria designed and is exactly the same as before.

JOHN (to himself) : “Paintjob is the same as before, how weird”.

Maria is standing behind John.

MARIA: “Why is it strange, some things remain the same in a paradox”

JOHN: “I guess. And you would know”.

Maria looks over where VooDoo is parked.

MARIA: “Where’s the VooDoo from John?”

JOHN: “I’ll find out one day in the future. I think I sent VooDoo and Veyah from the future to save myself in the past. Veyah is an advanced IOA. Sisters really, I must had created her from IOA”.

Porter enters the hanger airlock and comes rushing over to John.

PORTER: “A Endagern destroyer has entered the system, it briefly stopped at earth and is making its way to Saturn right now”.

John turs to Maria.

JOHN: “When will Alice be ready?”

MARIA: “In just eighteen minutes and twelve seconds exactly”

JOHN: “I’ll take VooDoo”

The rest of the crew come into the hanger and run over to John.

LUNA: “You heard?”

JOHN: “Yes. I’m taking VooDoo as Alice is not ready. You and the crew take Alice and follow me when she is ready”.

LUNA: “I’m coming with you John”

JOHN: “No. Alice needs to be fully crewed; you know Alice well, but you don’t know VooDoo”

John kisses Luna and rushes off to board VooDoo. Veyah is standing in VooDoo’s outer airlock doorway. John stops and turns to Veyah.

JOHN: “Let’s get going”

Veyah stands still for a few seconds as she uses her immense computing power and remotely powers up all of VooDoo’s systems. She blinks a few times.

VEYAH: “It’s done”

The huge hanger bay doors open as Maria and Frank and the crew watch VooDoo from the airlock quickly exit the mountains hanger and vanish upwards into space. The hanger door closes, and the hanger is re-pressurised with air.

The airlock door opens, and the crew as rush on to Alice to prepare for lift-off. Luna sits in the flight console chair and turns on external communications.

LUNA: “Frank, how long before we can take off”

Frank answers back via the airlock communication panel.

FRANK: “The droids are coming off now”

LUNA: “Dizzy, spin her up”

Dizzy’s hands skim across her console, instruments show the core powering up, 15% - 66% - 99%%....

DIZZY: “Ready to go steady at 116%”

LUNA: “Let’s go. Frank!”

Frank activates and opens the hanger doors; Luna manoeuvres the star ship to the outside of the mountain from where she was docked. Alice hovers for a few seconds, then slowly accelerates across the dusty and rocky Martian landscape kicking up a dust cloud behind her.

She then in a smooth arc she curves upwards into the Martian sky.

Following the same course as VooDoo and with a burst of speed Alice quickly vanishes into space.

LUNA: “Ghost, how far are we behind VooDoo”

GHOST: “VooDoo is at her destination; we are minutes behind”

LUNA: “Tombs, all amourment and guardian shielding online full power. Dizzy, keep tracking them. Porter, do we have any observation data on the Endallian destroyer?”

PORTER: “When it came into our planetary solar system it appeared to have no life signs on board. It was like it was computer guided or remotely controlled. It stopped off at earth, at which point it then gained a Endallian and human combination bio sign. Just the one onboard”

LUNA:”Melman”

The VooDoo has reached Saturn and John is looking at a screen and observing the Endallian destroyers huge cargo deck doors closing with the lifeboat in space and drifting away.

JOHN: “Have you any scanning data Veyah”

VEYAH: “I can tell you by particle movement and scans of the destroyer that the Cravens are onboard most likely with Melman judging by the human and Endallian bio scans.

JOHN: “I guess they took the lifeboat onboard the destroyer, pressurised the cargo deck, and evacuated the Cravens. And Melman has opened the doors and just spate out the lifeboat”.

VEYAH: “Good analogy, I’m sure that’s correct”

JOHN: “I have to get onto that ship before the doors close. I’m going to use a quick suit”.

(quick suit#) A much thinner spacesuit used for evacuation, gives much less protection)

John goes to the airlock and puts on a quick suit. He has a J8 gun over his shouter along with his trusty element gun on his belt. He tethers himself

to a cable that is attached to a carabiner and cable drum inside the airlock.

Veyah is standing outside the airlock watching though a window. John checks his helmet communicator.

JOHN: “Veyah! Can you hear me Ok?”

VEYAH: “Loud and clear John”

JOHN: “Pump up the pressure in the airlock to one hundred PSI, when you open the outer doors, it should blow me out and towards the destroyers closing doors”

VEYAH: “Quick, they are closing fast”

On an auxiliary panel outside the air lock Veyah taps away and manoeuvres VooDoo so the air lock is facing towards the destroyers’

closing doors.

VEAYAH: “Ready?”

JOHN: “Do it!”

Veyah punches the “EMERGENCY OUTER AIRLOCK DOORS

OPEN” button on the control panel. The air lock doors open quickly, and John is thrust out into space and in the direction of the Endallian spaceship closing cargo bay doors in a fog of expanding gas.

He narrowly makes it though the small gap. The cargo bay doors close as he is just three meters from the floor.

The doors cut the rope which curls up all over and around him as he tries to break his fall, but he ends up in a heap on the floor with a broken ankle. He pushes the cable away and tries to stand.

JOHN: “Oh fuck”

After John had left VooDoo to get onto the destroyer, Veyah entered VooDoo,s airlock by the inner corridor door. She had watched John though the outer airlock window. She takes a sharp intake of breath as she sees the cargo doors close and narrowly miss John.

The broken cable snaps back into the void between the two ships and then it coils backwards towards VooDoo as it gets cut.

She goes back outside the airlock closes the inner doors then opens the outer doors so she can reel in the remains of the cable back onto its cable drum.

Veyah closes the outer airlock doors and then goes into the airlock to examine the damaged cable. She looks up just as Alice comes into view on the other side of the destroyer.

LUNA: “John! What’s up?”

JOHN: “Where are you?”

LUNA: “We just got here”

JOHN: “Dam rope was supposed to break my fall, but the cargo doors cut it. I broke my ankle”.

LUNA: “John?”

JOHN: “I’ll live”

John gets up off the floor and uses the J8 like an underarm crutch.

JOHN: “Luna, Veyah, scan the ship for Melman”

VEYAH: “Looks like he has left the cargo bay and gone into a corridor in the next bulkhead”

JOHN: “My left or right”

LUNA: “Towards the destroyers bridge, go right”

VEYAH: “John, the destroyer is moving away”

John reaches heavy bulkhead double doors. He tries the control panel, but nothing happens. John talks to himself.

JOHN: “Well, why did I expect that not to work”

John opens a small compartment in the J8 gun and removes and unwraps some plastic explosive from it.

He places the explosive in the middle of the door and walks back several meters. He sets his personal shield generator to protect himself from the blast as soon as it is set off by the J8.

He sets off the explosive and his personal shield generator encapsulates him. The smoke clears, but the doors are still intact.

VEYAH: “John, the destroyer is on course for the sun”

JOHN: “Why?”

LUNA: “John! You need to get off that ship”.

John decides to take a shot at the doors using the J8’s own ordnance.

JOHN: “These doors are fucking me off. I ain’t got no time for this. This setting should work”.

John changes the guns settings and takes aim. He pushes the guns fire button and a rocket grenade set at maximum power gets shot from the J8

directly at the scorched double doors.

Again, his personal shield generator automatically encapsulates him. The blast knocks John across the cargo bay floor. John sits up.

LUNA: “John, what you are doing, what was that explosion? John, John?”

JOHN: “Good, the doors look’s open now”.

The smoke clears.

JOHN: “Wow, the whole fucking bulkhead is missing”.

John gets up and limps though the tangled smoking metal mess. He comes to another set of heavy metal doors. His face is showing the pain of his broken ankle.

Alice and VooDoo have followed the destroyer to the sun.

JOHN: “Where is Melman now”

VEYAH: “Looks like he is in an escape capsule. The Cravens are in one as well. The ship is entering the suns corona John”.

John uses a beam that stands out from the corridor wall to protect himself.

from the grenade blast this time. He fires the J8 at the doors with the same result. He limps though the destroyed bulkhead doors into another corridor.

A short walk down the corridor is the escape pod room. He can see though a glass panel that Melman is preparing to eject himself and the Cravens off the destroyer as the ship enters the sun.

JOHN: “He’s trapped me on the ship”

LUNA: “John, you’re now in the sun, the temperature is exceeding the limits of that ship. Its melting, its breaking up. Your too far in for us to get to you by using the TMG. Its way beyond it’s working limit”.

Yeyah is listening. Tears are rolling down her face.

YEYAH: “I’m coming to get you John”

VooDoo dives into the sun. Suddenly, there is a radiant electric blue explosive burst from the sun. Radio crackles. Silence.

LUNA: “John, Veyah?”

PORTER: “I’m registering a huge matter anti-matter explosion; I cannot detect the destroyer, or VooDoo. I am now detecting vapourised elements being ejected from the sun. Analysing. Defiantly spaceship debris.

Nothing, all gone”.

Porter looks down.

PORTER: “I’m sorry Luna”.

Luna falls to her knees. Dizzy stars sobbing. A deeply saddened Luna gets up and walks over to Dizzy who has stood up. They embrace and hug each other. Dizzy carries on crying, Luna looks stunned by what she has just witnessed. The rest of the crew are silent and stoney faced.

They collect the lifeboat and return to Mars in self-silence.

Back on Mars base the crew are met by Frank and Maria. They all hug both Maria and Frank then go to the bases dining area and sit down where Maria has put out drinks and food.

MARIA: “We watched the telemetry as it came in”.

LUNA: “I’m going back”.

FRANK: “Going back where?”.

LUNA: “I’m going back to when I first met John. I’m going back”.

MARIA: “This is a mixed-up paradox Luna. He may not be there”.

FRANK: “You could lose memories; We don’t know what other things Melman did. The past could had changed a lot. And now Melmens dead., we just don’t know. You could die”.

LUNA: “I have one gyre left. I am going”.

LUNA: “Frank, can you make sure my ship is in good shape and ready to go tomorrow for me?”

FRANK: “Yes, of course”

MARIA: “We can’t change your mind can we”

LUNA: “No. Sorry Maria. Frank. The crew understands. A party for John tonight?”.

MARIA: “Certainly”

Later, in the large diner they all eat, sing, and dance, and get drunk at Johns funeral party. Frank has used holographic overlays projected onto the basic yellow droids to make them look like real people. He has reprogrammed them to dance and has also given them temporary wireless AI personalities to liven up the party.

Next day everyone is in the hanger to see off Luna. Luna has a white skin suit on. Each crew member hugs Luna finishing with Frank and Maria.

MARIA: “We all love you”

LUNA: “I’ll hold on too that love and share it with John”.

Luna turns around and walks into a doorway cut into the hanger mountain wall where an exterior airlock is. Her spaceship is just outside the closed hanger door. The airlock door closes as she puts her helmet on. When the outer door open’s she turns around and waves back seen by the crew through the doors window. Dizzy sobs, Maria cries, everyone waves back.

Onboard her ship she starts the engines and directly takes off into space.

Luna puts the gyre into its cassette compartment and sets her console for the date, time and coordinates required for her trip into the possible unknown.

Luna is preoccupied thinking about John and has been manually working out by pen and paper to ensure that her course and gyre setting are the same as the computers. The paperwork is covering part of the console and she has failed to see the seatbelt warning flashing under her page of calculations.

Luna’s hand hovers over the commit button that will set off the gyre and journey her back to Earth the time and place she first met John.

LUNA: “Here we go”

She thumps the gyre commit button. The inside of the spacecraft turns electric blue, the craft shudders as the course trajectory computer detects a stray gravitational wave traveling though space caused by a supernova explosion many light years away.

The computer makes a slight deviation that rocks the spaceship. But Luna forgot to put her seat belt on properly and it is not locked in, and she gets thrown out of her seat. She bangs the back of her head in the fall to the floor and passes out.

Her spaceship reaches earth, but the automated systems have turned themselves off sounding an alarm for Luna to take control. She wakes as the ship is passing over some snow-covered mountains.

She gets up off the floor and sits down still dazed in front of the flight console. She tries to avoid a collision with the top of the mountain but hits the side and damages the ship.

SHIPS COMPUTER: “Damage to ship’s hull. Damage to flight control auto pilot system, manual input only. Danger, Freon gas escaping into the cabin”.

She cannot get to the emergency breathing apparatus head mask because she is too busy trying to control the ship due to the damage.

The freon gas is starting to make her cough badly. Luna locates the gyre that is in John’s car 600 kilometres away, so she adjusts her flight path to intercept John like she had before when they had first met.

John is in his car and driving across the desert road. It’s a bright sunny cloudless day. John is listening to music on the radio, the roof is down on his old Pontiac Firebird convertible, he is humming and singing to the tunes, then, BAM!

This pole or rod, four or six inches wide comes from out of the sky and smashes into the passenger seat.

Then the pole retracts. It shoots up into the air. John looks up and sees the underside of a UFO some 10 meters above him.

Then BAM! Again, this rod shoots out from the bottom of the spaceship, but this time the pole goes the briefcase on the passenger’s seat and straight though the cars metal floor, then the car starts to lift off the ground as the pole retracts again.

He looks up, and the UFO is starting to oscillate and wobble like there is something wrong. The car drops back onto road and the pole retracts back into the spaceship.

The spacecraft tilts over to the left and starts losing height, then it flies off and over a shallow sandy and gravel hill then vanishes, a crash is herd.

John drives off the road and over the hill to where the UFO has crash landed.

John gets out of his car and walks around the UFO.

John stands there looking at it. Then he sees a rectangular shape forming on the side of the ship’s hull, it looked like a door frame was appearing.

Then suddenly there is an open space in the side of the spaceship, a ramp comes down to the ground and he walks over to look inside.

He hears what sounds like coughing coming from inside the craft. Luna stagers out, she has managed to put on a skin-tight breathing mask that covers her entire head. She tumbles down the ramp and onto the sandy and rocky ground.

John goes over to see if he can help, but there is no movement from Luna at first, there appears to be blood soaking though her spacesuit in various places.

He cannot see Luna’s face or head to make any sort of judgement about her condition, so he kneels beside her, and goes to pull off her breathing mask. Suddenly Luna grabs John by the back of his head with one hand and pushes her palm firmly against his forehead with her other hand.

John grabs both her wrists and pulls her hands away to stop the consciousness transfer.

JOHN: “It’s me Luna, John. There’s no need for the consciousness transfer. You’re a year late, but I knew you would be here. The gyre in my car won’t go off, it’s disabled”.

The rumble of a 70’ V8 car can be heard crunching over the sand and rocks as it approaches John and Luna. A car door slams shut. A female walks over holding an active J8 guns and stands behind John looking down at Luna,

JOHN: “You could had followed me a lot closer Lux, I could barely see you in the rear-view mirror. Anything?”

LUX G: “All ok John, nothing followed her in”

John pulls off Lunas white mask that covers her face and head. He rests her blooded head in his lap. He pushes her hair back to examine the wound. Luna is tired and is suffering from breathing in the toxic gas and also from her injuries. She looks into the clear blue sky then looks back at John. Tears roll away from Lunas eyes. He holds her carefully. Luna gently says,

LUNA: “John”

JOHN: “Let’s get you fixed up. Did I ever tell you; I love you so much”.

THE END…

Or the start of the beginning…