1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) (30 page)

“Problem?” he called to Ekka.

“Yes,” she said. “We have a problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The gear shifter just broke off. We’re never going to come to a full stop.”

“That,” Tesla said, “could very well be a problem.”

“Dammit,” Billy said.

“What?”

“I got an idea.”

“I think you had better tell me.”

“Billy?” Ekka called. “What are you going to do?”

“We’re landing,” he replied.

“Where” Tesla asked.

“On water.”

[ 124 ]

In the engine room, Ekka Gagarin hovered over the broken gear shift housing. The electric lights in the engine room flickered along with the constantly increasing and decreasing transmogrifier cycle.

The lever had broken off inside the housing. An inch of metal protruded upward from it, and constantly moved back and forth along with the oscillation of the engine and the lights.

Ekka looked around.

The deck around her was littered with tools and components, but she could see nothing of any use.

A constant rattle from the wall drew her attention. It had been there all along while she was trying to concentrate, but she had shut it out. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. She had seen the silvery glint of it so many times before, but never outside of the company of Jack Ross. It was his original robotic arm.

Ekka leapt across the room and removed it from the iron bracket that held it in place. Conklin had said the arm was too badly damaged to be reattached. She had seen Billy manipulate the giant robotic arm by pulling on the cables inside. It was possible that she could do the same with Jack’s original, smaller arm.

She returned to the transmogrifier with the final useful remnant of Steam Ross.

[ 125 ]

The
Arcadia
began losing altitude over the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. She shed speed, but without full power to the transmogrifier, the gravitational pull of the planet began to take hold. Only her forward inertia kept her in the air. Her trajectory, however, was that of a descent.

Billy snapped the fingers of his right hand three times in rapid succession.

“What are you doing that for?” Tesla asked.

“Sometimes after the third snap, an idea will pop right into my head.”

“Did one?”

Billy glanced at Tesla. “Uh. Nope.”

“We have to be over water when she comes down, or we’ll never survive.”

“I know.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Tesla inquired.

“I’m not sure, but I’m bringing the nose up.”

“I don’t believe that will help.”

“Maybe it’ll help us to not see where we come down,” Billy said.

“Yes. You are right.”

Billy The Kid pulled back on the left stick and the nose of the
Arcadia
came up into clear blue sky.

There was a sudden burst of power from the central shaft beneath them.

“How’s that?” Ekka’s voice came over the speaker.

“That’s good,” Billy called. “Can you keep it like that for awhile?”

“Maybe a minute!” she shouted.

“That’s all I need.”

Billy and Tesla breathed again, each relieved that Ekka somehow bought them a few unlooked for moments of life.

“I say, old chap,” Tesla said. “It’s been fine having you along for the voyage.”

“I feel the same.”

“I suppose, what I meant was, that if we don’t come out of this alive, it has been rather good to know you, Mr. Kid.”

“It’s Bonney. Billy Bonney.”

“Yes. And you may call me Nik.”

Billy laughed. “I would not dare. But thank you, just the same.”

And then the hum beneath them ceased completely.

[ 126 ]

Ekka was pleased with herself and with the makeshift gear lever. She used all of her might to keep the bundle of cables form Jack Ross’s robotic arm taut in her grasp. Her bicep strained. She braced her left arm under her right elbow for support and any additional ounce of strength she could muster.

Half a minute ticked by.  She felt the burning in her hand, wrist, forearm, and bicep.

“Hold, dammit,” she spat through clenched teeth. Her arm shook, her jaw trembled. Her feet and spread legs spasmed as she pushed them downward into the deck.

The seconds that drifted by became, each one, an exercise in enduring pain and forcing her body to bend to her indomitable will.

She heard Billy’s and Tesla’s voice faintly over the speaker. She couldn’t make out any words, but the two men appeared to be chatting. She thought of Billy’s handsome smile, even as she fought the urge to cry out from the strain.

Ekka knew that every second she bought for the
Arcadia
was important. It meant her life and it meant the brilliant Nikola Tesla’s life. It also meant the life of the man she loved, and whether that life might continue.

She held the cables even as she felt them slipping beneath her grip.  When the fingertips of the robotic arm slipped from the remnant of the ship’s main gear, Ekka checked the inexorable back and forth movement of the thing by sheer stamina and force of will. When Ross’s fingertips completely failed, the metal rod spun away into the dark housing beneath, disappearing out of sight.

[ 127 ]

Judah Merkam’s space ship
Arcadia
lost the last vestige of its shimmer from the dying transmogrifier and surrendered to the overwhelming gravitation pull of that conglomerate of molten nickel, iron, rock, and water we call Earth. She sailed forward for a moment out of sheer momentum before her bow began to come down.

The
Arcadia
slapped the water of the Indian Ocean as a stone angled at the correct attitude might strike the still waters of a millpond. She struck...and
skipped
.

The first strike was the hardest, as the both ship and the ocean absorbed the greatest amount of inertia.

On the bridge of the doomed ship, Nikola Tesla banged his forehead into the velvet cushions of the dashboard, then rocked backward in his chair. One of his molars came loose, but he was otherwise unharmed, but for a mild concussion. Beside him, Billy Bonney held his hands and arms before him as a shield. They struck the instruments and gauges and protected his face and head and ribs. He emerged unscathed except for the weeping wound in his shoulder.

In the engine room, Ekka Gagarin was thrown the entire length of the chamber and through the hatch into the sudden darkness of the main chamber. Her arms came into contact with the central spire and she grasped it to stop her forward plunge. The electricity of the coil was long dead.

The second and third strikes were lighter by far.

Fourteen times the
Arcadia
struck the salt waters of the southern hemisphere. On the last strike, which felt to her surviving crew members genteel in comparison to the first and successive impacts. She was swallowed by water within sight of land.

[ 128 ]

The
Arcadia
plunged downward seven fathoms before her buoyancy took hold and brought her back to the surface. At her lowest level, the bodies of Edward Teach and Denys Jay-Patten exited the rear of the strange craft and seemed to embrace one another like star-crossed lovers.

The ship emerged from the depths a dozen yards from a Ceylonese fishing boat. The wave from her birth into the world swept under the boat and rocked it.

A fisherman and his two sons sat up from their midday nap beneath the shade of their canvas sunscreen and gaped at the seaborne craft.

On the bridge, Billy waved at the fisherman. The youngest of the tanned brown fishermen waved back.

[ 129 ]

Ekka Gagarin waited for Billy. She held onto the central shaft with both hands. Her feet dangled in the air twenty feet from the inner hull below, and her strength was beginning to flag. At the worst she might come out of the deal with a broken leg.

“I’ll get you!” Billy called. “Hold on!”

Ekka started to say something, but knew if she did, she would fall. She waited and held on.

“Do you trust me?” Billy called up to her.

“Yes,” she said between clenched teeth.

“Then let go. I’ll always be beneath you.”

Ekka Gagarin let go, and fell into the arms of her lover.

“Good show!” Tesla called to them. He made his way down the ladder and tromped onto the lateral deck beside the main cargo hatch. “Exit, shall we?”

“Yes,” Ekka and Billy called together.

“We’ll have to go together,” Tesla said. “Come up here the best way you can. When we open this hatch, there’s no telling what could happen.”

Billy held onto Ekka’s waist and helped her climb up to the deck. When the two stood beside Tesla, Billy asked, “What do you mean? We’ll leave, that’s what will happen.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Tesla gestured to the door. “Who would like to the do the honors?”

“Me,” Billy said. “Step aside.”

Billy unlatched the cross bolt and flung it aside. He spun the wheel.

A whirlwind of air rushed inward and the breeze tousled their hair. The sun shone brightly overhead and they squinted against its welcome glare.

The ship began to roll beneath them.

“Jump!” Billy shouted as the water rose toward them.

They jumped as one and plunged beneath the cool water. They kicked toward the surface and the light.

When his head crested the surface, Billy looked back to see the Arcadia begin to disappear from view.

“Swim!” he shouted. “Swim away!”

The three swam from the ship to the fishing boat, and to the waiting arms of a new set of friends.

[ 130 ]

July 22, 1969—Tranquility Base

“Make sure we’re no longer transmitting, Neil. We have to talk about this.”

Neil turned to face Buzz. The dust at their feet slowly settled. Each man nodded to the other. As one, they tapped the buttons on their left arms, then tilted their helmets toward each other until they made contact.

“Can you hear me?” Buzz asked, his voice raised.

“I hear you fine” Neil Armstrong stated. “A little muffled, but I think we can talk out here.”

“Yeah. We have to have our stories straight before we get back to the lander. I think everything we say is being recorded.”

“I know. Whatever the hell hit that base, there’s not much left of it.”

“A war, maybe? An alien war?”

“That doesn’t explain the...artifacts.”

The two men turned their helmets to the right to stare at the rock and the silvery thing atop it. It shimmered brightly in the noonday sun.

“What do you make of it?” Aldrin asked.

“My daddy used to have one of those. Samuel Colt. Forty-five caliber. Peacemaker model.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. This one is beautiful, but what’s it doing here?”

“I think...I think—”

“What?”

“I think we’ll never know.”

“Do we report this?” Aldrin asked.

“No one would ever believe it. They would believe aliens before they would believe...
this
.”

The sun drifted down one point of the sky and revealed the letters carved into the rock.

“I’ll be damned,” Neil Armstrong said, but their helmets no longer touched.

Aldrin pointed and Armstrong nodded.

The words on the rock read:

THE KID WAS HERE

A Future Chronology

1889—The
Arcadia
returns/crashes on Earth.

1890—Nikola Tesla drops patent suit against Judah Merkam.

1891—Article in the London Times declares “End of Ripper Murders.”

1901—Death of Queen Victoria, end of the Victorian Age.

1906—Nikola Tesla begins construction of his Wardenclyffe, NY laboratory.

1908—Nikola Tesla eradicates the alien threat by bouncing a high energy lightning bolt off of the Moon near the
Arcadia
landing site, which reflects back to Earth and obliterates the alien base in Tunguska Siberia, effectively ending the alien threat. No evidence of a meteorite is ever found at the Tunguska blast site.