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"Bates!” Someone was shaking him and whispering insistently into his ear. "Bates, wake up!”
It sounded like Mel. What was Mel doing here in his apartment? Bates was perfectly comfortable where he was. He buried his face deeper in his pillow and tried to go back to sleep, but someone was bodily trying to pull him up and off his wonderfully warm, soft pillow. He resisted by hugging the pillow even tighter to his face. Abruptly, he heard a familiar woman's voice cursing in Swedish, and the pillow itself started heaving about underneath him!
He suddenly realized that he was hugging a squirming thigh tightly with both arms, and that his face was pressed into the warm, shapely buttocks of Mel's wife Jane, who lay face down on the floor before him!
Bates de-tangled himself instantly from the squirming woman and popped off and away from her as if she were poisonous to the touch, with a horrified look on his face. "Fudge Winkies!” he exclaimed. With that, laughter echoed in the vault, and Bates looked around at smiling, laughing faces. He was enormously relieved to see that the laughing faces included those of both Mel and Jane.
The others were yawning, stretching, struggling to their feet, and making off color remarks. "I told you, Sandra," quipped Norma. "It's the quiet ones you have to look out for."
"It's a good thing I was wearing slacks," said Jane.
Norma and Sandra, pretending to be frightened, looked down at their own legs. They were both wearing skirts and panty hose. "I'm going to wear extra panty hose at night around Bates from now on!” quipped Sandra.
"I'm taking mine off!” returned Norma, laughing heartily, as she elbowed Bates in the ribs. This was a side to Sandra and Norma that was normally absent during their working hours as engineers, thank goodness, and it further embarrassed the dumbfounded Bates.
Despite the tension relieving levity, Bates felt that an apology was in order. "I'm really sorry Jane, Mel, it was an accident, believe me!
"Of course it was, Narb!” agreed Mel. "You should have seen your face!”
"Oh sure, an accident; I bet!” quipped Jane. "That's what they all say!”
Mel feigned shock. "What! Who's 'they’ anyway? You mean this has happened to you before?”
"Sure," she retorted. "It happens all the time! Physicists just can't keep their hands off of me. One of them is after me every darn night!”
The playful banter was interrupted by the abrupt opening of the vault door. Though the assembled company feared the worst, it was only Oscar and Milo, who hadn't yet even been missed by the others.
"Morning folks!” boomed Oscar. "Milo wanted out to do some dog business, and you looked very busy with Jane, Bates.” He winked at his buddy. "And guess what! We forgot to hide the Nitro last night! We left it sitting outside, plain as day. Anyway, I hid it in one of the empty hangar bays. It wouldn't start; I had to push it.” He sat down in a wood chair that groaned under the strain of his massive weight. "So what's next on the agenda?" he asked, bringing everyone back to the serious business that was at hand, for which Bates was grateful.
"Well," said Bates, "I think first of all we should try to phone our Government and tell them what we know.” Some of the others didn't think that was such a good idea, but Bates would not be deterred. After all, he reasoned, they were still Government employees, most of them, and this Ra business was clearly a matter of national security.
He first tried to COM the President. He ended up talking to a low level staffer who claimed that he never heard of Bates or the DOD. The man hung up at the first mention of a national disaster being caused by space aliens. Bates then tried to contact the Vice President, with similar results. Aided by Sandra's encyclopedic knowledge of Government structure and regulations, he continued further down the hierarchy to other staffers and congress people, with similar results.
Nearly an hour passed, most of it spent waiting while being passed on mindlessly from one nameless staffer to another. One after another, Government officials were 'unavailable' regardless of anything Bates said by way of persuasion. Finally, Sandra informed Bates that due to laws established years ago during the Cold War era, he himself was the next in the line of hierarchical succession: thirteenth!
"You're kidding!” said Bates.
"No kidding," she replied, "it's right here!” Her skilled fingers caused the appropriate legalese to pop up on a Lab VISICOM. Bates stared at it. "But wait a minute!” he said. "This is the line of succession for presidential powers in case of a national emergency!”
"Well," interjected Oscar, "doesn't the destruction of Earth by space aliens qualify?”
It was an excellent point. "Yes, I suppose so," conceded Bates, hesitantly.
"And haven't you tried to contact those other people that were ahead of you in line?" continued Oscar.
"Well, yes, but you can't be coming to the conclusion that I think you are!”
"Why not?" asked Barns, his voice still weak from his ordeals. "It's your right. No, what's more, it's your duty! Why we don't even know for sure if there is a President anymore! The Ra could be anywhere and anybody.”
"But you signed over your position when you were drugged by the enemy, Barns," argued Bates. "So you're still in charge. Or the real President is, or somebody else! Certainly not me!”
Barns, who had been slumped in a chair all morning as he slipped in and out of sleep, shook his head weakly. "Give me a few days to recover, and maybe I'll make that argument myself, Bates. But right now we need a leader and you've been doing all right so far. So keep it up. That's an order, if you insist."
"And let's face it, Narb;" said Oscar, "we're it! There is nobody else. The rest of the Government has given up. From what we've learned, the Government has the police hunting down anyone who even knows about Dannos in order to shut them up. They've given up on stopping the disaster and only hope to avoid panic. Besides, they aren't very likely to believe stories about space aliens. So we're on our own. Plus, we are all that remains of the Department of Defense, so defense of America and the world is our job anyway."
Bates still had doubts. "But to top things off, you actually want me to declare myself to be in charge of the United States? And what if I did? Sure, I'd like us to try to work together to at least try to do something about the asteroid and the Ra, but CAN we actually do anything? I mean, I can sort of understand why our Government gave up. Obviously, to even try to do anything, you'd first have to have bombs or something to destroy a giant iron planetoid, and powerful missiles or space vehicles as well, and Earth hasn't had those in years."
On cue, Norma entered through a rear door carrying a large ratchet. Her hands, face, and clothes were splattered with oil, but she seemed to be in her element. There was a broad smile on her face. "The Bus is almost ready to go! Well, ready enough for local travel, anyway, in a few hours."
"Bravo Norma!” beamed Mel.
"She is an absolute wizard with a set of tools," Oscar explained to Bates.
Barns was staring at Norma with a look of rapture on his face. "What a woman!” Bates heard him mutter, under his breath.
"I'm sure that we're all glad that this Bus of yours is fixed,” said Bates. "But what can we do with it? Should we all take a bus tour of Virginia during our last days? I have been meaning to get to Williamsburg for the holidays; it might be very nice to see all those Christmas lights and folks dressed up in colonial clothes.”
Mel, Oscar, Sandra and Norma all looked at each other and laughed, while the others, including Bates, simply looked perplexed.
"Bates," explained Oscar, "we were thinking of perhaps going just a little further than Williamsburg. I think it's time that we showed the Bus to all of the newcomers.”
Norma led the group out the back door of the main room, down a short hallway and through another heavy vault door that opened up into a large garage. The garage was dimly lit by a scattering of old-fashioned incandescent bulbs that somehow still functioned. In the center of the garage sat a white, smallish, rather pl
ain, but oddly streamlined, Bus. What was so odd about it Bates couldn't immediately put his finger on.
Oscar put one huge hand on his shoulder and led him closer. "Come on, Bates, see if you can figure out for yourself what's unusual about the Bus.”
"Well, the windows are smaller than usual.” Indeed they looked more like ship or aircraft portals than normal windows. He reached up and tapped one with his knuckles. It was like thumping a boulder of solid granite. "And thick!” he exclaimed, truly surprised and puzzled. "And the wheels are very small and thin!” The wheels reminded him of those cheap, nearly useless emergency spare tires that had been put in the trunks of unsuspecting new car buyers for the last couple of decades. “These donut wheels clearly weren't designed to see much service. Very odd feature for a bus.”
The sides of the Bus were milky white in color and slightly translucent. Looking more closely, he realized that the white color wasn't paint; it was the actual material that formed the hull of the Bus! He fished a nickel out of his pocket and tapped the side of the Bus. A dull sound resulted instead of a metallic clank. "Why, this looks like solid heat resistant Starlite Plastic! It must have cost a fortune!”
He stepped back a bit and scanned the Bus with renewed interest. In the front, there was no grillwork to allow air entry. Instead, there was an unscreened air intake on each side over a foot in diameter, just below the headlights. They looked like jet engine intakes. The headlights, if that's what they were, seemed also to be covered by thick, transparent, Starlite Plastic. At the rear of the Bus were what looked like large rocket engine outlets!
"Look inside," suggested Mel. The front passenger side door was also unusual for a Bus. The door latch was recessed and covered by a sliding panel of Starlite, large, as if made to accommodate a giant's fingers, very solidly constructed, and made of some material that Bates couldn't identify. Ceramics maybe. Once unlatched the thick door swung open on its own slowly and steadily. The doorway was wide but a bit low for a Bus; Bates had to duck low to step in.
The inside was like no Bus that Bates had ever seen. The passenger seats went only half way back, where his view was obstructed by a wall and door similar to the one he had just entered.
The rows of double seats on each side of the center isle were bucket seats, with numerous restraining devices for all parts of the body. It reminded him of the seats used in some of the more adventurous, gut wrenching rides in amusement parks. The seats also sported what looked like virtual reality helmets and other electronic gadgetry, as if these were actually crew stations rather than just passenger seats. Throughout the vehicle, little metal was evident. Most of the Bus seemed to be constructed of plastics and ceramics that were both lighter and stronger than any metal.
The biggest shock was in the driver's area up front. The seats here were even more elaborate, and there were three: a left and right seat with equivalent controls, and a center seat positioned a little in back of those which provided a full over-the-shoulder view of all the controls at the other two stations. The front seats faced numerous dashboard read-out devices, many of them labeled using glowing letters, and many dozens of control knobs and switches. Elaborate virtual reality helmets sat on the empty seats.
Extending from the dashboard towards each of the two front seats was a matched pair of devices that could not be mistaken, and which made it obvious that this Bus was not designed for ground transport. Traditional pilot yokes identified this Bus as a FLYING vehicle!
Suddenly all the implications of the sturdy, heat resistant, wingless Bus hit him. This was not only a flying Bus; this was a SPACE Bus! ”Fudge Winkies!” he exclaimed sincerely.
****