Bypass Gemini

Chapter 7

The inside of the bus was as typical as the outside. Row after row of uncomfortable seats, windows that could barely open, and upholstery the color of mulch and chewed gum. The only significant difference was the lack of a driver in the driver’s seat. Automated cars weren’t outside the norm, these days, but they still stuck a driver in the school buses to supervise things. This one was puttering along all by its lonesome. He stacked the two cases he’d rescued on the seat beside him, elevated his injured leg, and leaned back to watch the scenery. As he did, he raised an eyebrow. Evidently there was one other difference between this bus and the standard one. The speed.

It may have looked like an old jalopy on its last legs, but the scenery was zipping by like he was in a top of the line speedster. The ride should have been a nightmare of bumps and jostles, too. The old hover buses weren’t meant for off-roading, so they stayed pretty tightly coupled to the ground. With road surface that looked like the global pothole preserve, his teeth should have rattled loose by now. That meant someone had stuck an inertial inhibitor in this sucker, too. Lex had half a mind to take control of it to see how well it handled, but when he craned his neck to check out the driver’s seat, he found that there were no controls to speak of. Just as well. He wasn’t one hundred percent recovered, brain-wise. Getting behind the controls of an unfamiliar piece of equipment wasn’t a great idea.

Instead, he just watched the landscape go by. In almost every direction there was nothing but more meteor-battered landscape. A bright red or white streak would drift down from time to time, kicking up a huge dust plume. Ahead of the bus, though, a cluster of three low complexes was approaching over the horizon. The craters were steadily increasing in density as they got closer, until finally, about two miles away, they stopped completely. A perfect ring of flawless gravel surrounded the buildings, which were clearly the destination.

There wasn’t anything remarkable about them. They had the minimalist, boxy sort of architecture that industry and the military tended to favor. Simple, quick to build, easy to maintain. They were identical, about a dozen stories tall, maybe a few city blocks wide, and about a quarter mile long. They were arranged in a radial pattern around a massive circular landing pad, easily a half mile in diameter. Lining the roof of each building was the customary array of antennae and satellite dishes, along with a few rows of some sort of long, thin, articulated cylinder. They looked like telescopes, but it didn’t make sense that there would be so many, and that they would be so big. While he pondered them, three suddenly repositioned, pointing at the same point, somewhere high in the sky. Then there was a flair of light, just for an instant, leading from the end each cylinder off into the sky. They were lasers, the light had been caused by the beams vaporizing whatever dust had been floating in their way.

So his host was the sort of person who kept a battery of lasers and fired them randomly in the air. That wasn’t a good sign.

The bus slowed to a stop in front of the doorway of one of the three buildings. The door was in the center of the wall that faced the landing pad, and beside it the word “Lab” had been crudely spray-painted. The doors opened, letting in the icy air.

“End of the line. I was in the lab when I recorded this. I’m probably still there now. Busy. Just follow the green lights, but don’t bug me unless I’m done,” the recorded voice buzzed across the PA speakers.

Lex grabbed his things and limped down the steps of the bus. Once he was out, the door snapped shut and the bizarre vehicle whisked off toward one of the other buildings. The injured pilot eyed “Lab” warily. He wasn’t terribly confident in the wisdom of entering a strange building on a strange planet after a surreal trip, but the alternative was sitting outside until the cold became lethal. He shrugged and stepped up to the door.