Against Time Read online

  “Like what we saw below,” he said.

  “At a vastly more frequent and violent scale,” she said, nodding. “The closer to the core of this galaxy, the nastier it gets for human life. They stayed pretty much in the zone conducive for human growth over long periods of time.”

  “So where do you think they went?”

  “Andromeda Galaxy and all the smaller galaxy clusters around it,” she said without hesitation.

  The map of the galaxy shrunk down to the size of a small dinner plate on the wall allowing the closest neighboring galaxies to be shown. “Looks like they came in from the Large Magellanec Cloud and then headed to Andromeda and all of its satellite galaxies.”

  He had to admit that it looked that way. Like following a map on a bunch of country roads.

  “Anyone go after them?”

  “Not that I know of,” she said. “Our ships don’t have the speed to cross that much distance in a time that would allow us to catch them, even if we were sure where they were headed.”

  “So how did they do all this?” Fisher asked, trying his best to keep his mind clear and the scale of what he was thinking about under control. “Are we all genetically the same? Everyone on every planet?”

  “We all started from the same basic gene pool,” she said, again nodding. “And no degradation over time. Every planet’s human and animal population started with the same genes, the same diversity, the same numbers. One hundred and forty-four thousand.”

  There was that number again. He just couldn’t seem to make any logical sense out of any of this. There was something very clear he was missing. He knew that feeling. He just had to find what was between the obvious.

  “Did they grow our ancestors or something?”

  She shrugged. “Lots of theories on that. But what we do know is that it took them six major visits to each planet to accomplish what they did.”

  “Six?”

  She nodded. “On the first visit they shoved some asteroid or something large into every planet that caused a vast extinction event of most of the animal and plant life that was natural to the planet.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  She shook her head no. “On the next four visits they covered each planet with new plants at first and then stages of animal life that quickly took over, including early primates.”

  “How long between that last animal seeding and the introduction of humans?”

  “About three thousand years,” she said, not even breaking into a smile.

  Fisher shook his head. “That is so against all science I know that it’s scary.”

  She nodded. “We are convinced they also seeded historical evidence on every planet of both human, plant, and animal history.”

  Fisher started to open his mouth to object, then realized where he was sitting and that he was talking to a beautiful human scientist on a huge spaceship light years from his home and even farther from her home.

  Historical evidence could be planted. Sitting here was very real and hard to discount.

  But wow, planting historical evidence was sure going to make Callie’s work as a paleontologist seem almost impossible. Unless maybe she could help find some clues in the planted evidence. She might be able to help him on all this if he convinced her to come on board.

  Fisher closed his mouth and just sat there.

  “Hard to get a grasp on it all, isn’t it?”

  Fisher laughed. “I imagine you grew up with this knowledge. I’ve just been coming to grips with it over the last two years that we have been out here in space exploring.”

  “That would be difficult,” she said, a look of worry suddenly in her blue eyes.

  “I’m sure I’ll come to terms with it,” Fisher said, even though he wasn’t so sure. “So how long do you think the Seeders were in this galaxy?”

  “Only about fifty thousand years,” she said.

  That number made no sense to Fisher. “How many planets did they do this to?”

  She shrugged. “No firm count. Maybe upward of a hundred million in this galaxy. Maybe ten times that number. No one really knows.”

  “In fifty thousand years? Holy smokes, how many Seeders were there?”

  She shrugged once again. “No one knows that either, but they just finished about five thousand years ago as far as we can tell.”

  That stunned him even more.

  “How long have the races in your sector been in space?”

  “About two thousand years,” she said. “We just missed them.”

  “And they didn’t leave a trace?” he asked, stunned at what she had told him.

  “Just us,” she said. “Just us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CALLIE FOUND the water supply for the lodge in about thirty minutes. As she feared, it was an electric pump that seemed to draw water up from a well.

  The entire well was tucked in a large room in the basement and off the side that seemed to almost hang over the ravine. She studied the pump for a moment, noticing that it looked fairly new.

  Also, on one side of the pump was a small generator.

  She opened the fuel cap on the generator and as far as she could tell, the tank was full. That was good because so far she hadn’t found any extra fuel to run any of the generators in the lodge.

  It would have been logical that they would have set up this generator to run only when water was required and the power was off. Otherwise, she was going to have to be down here turning it off and on regularly.

  From the big well pump, she followed a white-wrapped pipe through a wall and into a large room next door. There was another smaller pump there and the pipe went straight up.

  She tried to mentally mark her position in the building and then went upstairs.

  The pipe was exposed in a back service area coming from the floor and going through the ceiling to the next floor above.

  So she went upstairs.

  The pipe again came from below and went directly up through the ceiling.

  The pipe didn’t seem to be like any vent, but if it wasn’t, that meant there was another floor up there under the eves of the lodge.

  It took her almost a half hour of searching and opening doors before she found the service staircase.

  She followed it up, a flashlight in one hand just in case the power chose this moment to finally go out.

  She could stand up under the peak of the roof and there was a wide walkway there. She followed it back to the center of the hotel and there she saw something she couldn’t believe.

  A large tank. Maybe ten steps across and almost as tall as she was.

  The white pipe she had followed up from the basement came up the side of the tank and curved and went into the tank.

  There were a couple of metal stairs on one side and she climbed them and opened a metal hatch she found at the top.

  Water.

  A full tank of water.

  All gravity fed. All she had to do was run the generator for the pump to refill the tank at times. And the tank was large enough that it would last her for a very long time.

  Her decision to stay in the lodge had clearly been a correct one.

  So she closed up the tank and headed back downstairs. Then for the next hour she checked every faucet in every room in the building, making sure nothing was on or even dripping.

  Now she needed to find more fuel for the generators. The small one running the water pump had gas in it, so she knew with all the cars in the parking lot, she could refill that one.

  But the two larger generators she suspected didn’t run on gas. More than likely diesel.

  She went back into the basement and checked both fuel tanks on both generators. She was right, both ran diesel and both were thankfully full. Clearly the lodge had been getting ready for the coming winter.

  She went back outside. It was just noon and the sun was now hitting the top of the lodge and the valley floor. It was a beautiful day once again.

  She started slowly around the
lodge, looking for any sign of an underground fuel tank.

  Nothing.

  She went from the service entrance all the way around past the front door and to the uphill side and out onto a balcony built there off the main lobby.

  Cave Creek ran below the lodge, but there wasn’t even a trail down the ravine that she could see. All the guests normally went up the hill to the caves. Not down into the ravine.

  She went back to the kitchen, made herself a quick turkey sandwich and then, eating it and carrying an apple in her pocket, she headed back out and up the hill, looking alongside the road for any sign of a fuel tank.

  There was nothing around the Forest Service dorm building with the bodies in it, so she climbed up through the parking lot and walked around the building above the top of the parking lot.

  Nothing there as well.

  So the only fuel she had for the two big electrical generators were in them.

  She would have to make that last. And charge her electrical devices in the cars.

  It wasn’t going to be the best, but she could make it work through the winter.

  And then next spring she would deal with that future when it got here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FISHER WENT BACK to The Lady and just sat in the kitchen area, munching on the remains of the salad from lunch and trying to figure out what was the best way to approach Callie.

  After talking with Benson and then Jenny in the Seeder Research, he was even more convinced he was just flat missing something that was obvious and right in front of him. He hated that feeling. And he had a hunch that from what he understood of Callie’s mind and specialty, the two of them might be able to solve what he was missing.

  He just didn’t know how he was going to convince her to come back here with him.

  Finally he hit on an idea.

  He spent the next hour studying the area around the lodge, the towns below it, the road in, and the distances involved. And he memorized all the names as best he could.

  Then he made sure that his jeans and shirts would match the look of the area and that he had a few days of clothes with him.

  He packed that in a backpack, contacted Doc that he was leaving, and with the picture of Callie smiling at him in his pack, he headed for the transportation department. His stomach was twisting in fear, but unless he tried this now, he never would.

  And he didn’t want to lose the chance of getting to know Callie more. And if nothing else, rescuing her from a very tough number of years on the planet’s surface.

  Raina greeted him with a smile as he appeared in the transportation department.

  “Ready to give it a try?”

  “I am. But a couple of questions to make sure my plan will work. If I come back, how quickly can I return?”

  “It would take us about thirty seconds to send you back to the exact spot,” she said.

  Then she smiled. “Vanishing in front of her might well help her decide.”

  “Or scare her to death.”

  “Yeah, it most certainly will do that,” Raina asked.

  “One more favor? Do you have access to the security images of that day when she was on board?”

  “Sure,” Raina said, sitting back down at her station. “What room again?”

  “L-266, area 3160.”

  Her fingers flew over her board and the same image Fisher had of Callie in his pack came up on her screen.

  “Is there a camera showing us both talking with the planet in the background?”

  “Again good thinking,” Raina said. On the screen an image appeared a little farther away from the two of them. They were talking and both of them were very clear. Beyond them, out the window, a clear image of the planet.

  “Perfect,” Fisher said.

  She printed it out and he folded it and put it in his pack with the other one.

  Then she took him back to the transportation room. It was a giant area with a hundred small platforms lined along both walls separated by narrow partitions.

  “Where do you want the return chip?” she asked. “And how many times do you want to hit it as a return call.”

  “Two clear pushes,” he said. Then he raised his arm and showed her where he wanted it to be. Under his arm on his left side, so that his right hand could reach over like he was grabbing his arm and his thumb could push the return key.

  She nodded and then before he could worry about something being inserted under his skin, it was already there.

  He stared at the slight lump under his skin and felt it, amazed.

  Raina smiled. “We can transport full humans and anything we want just about anywhere. Easy to put something just under your skin.”

  He shook his head. Of course it would be.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She had him step up on a nearby platform and as he did a control panel slid up out of the floor in front of the platform and Raina stepped to it.

  “Where exactly?” she asked.

  “It’s midday in the area she’s at, correct?” He had checked that a few times, but he wanted to be very sure he didn’t arrive in the middle of the night.

  “It is,” Raina said.

  “How about a short distance down the road below the lodge?”

  “Perfect,” Raina said. “I show her in the lodge right now. Good luck. And remember, two pushes on the return and you come right back here to this platform.”

  “And no problem going back and forth?” he asked.

  “None,” she said, smiling.

  “Then let’s do this before I chicken out.”

  Raina nodded and her fingers danced on the board and the next moment Fisher found himself standing in fresh mountain air on a narrow paved road.

  “Oh, man, now what have I done?” he said out loud as he looked around at the tall pine trees and mountains that towered over the narrow valley.

  No one answered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  IT WAS JUST AFTER ONE in the afternoon and Callie had just finished making a salad from the last of the lettuce in the fridge when she heard the call. She had added in part of a tomato and hard-boiled an egg and crumbled it over the salad. She had a choice of dressing that had been made up and in the fridge for a few days, but she didn’t trust them and used the oil and vinegar instead.

  She had just tossed the entire thing realizing she had made far too much for one person when she heard someone shouting. At first she didn’t recognize the sound, but then a second “Hello!” echoed through the air outside the lodge.

  All she could think about was rescue was here.

  Could that be possible?

  She left the salad sitting on the counter and scrambled up the stairs and to the main door of the lodge that led out onto the big road.

  “Anyone home?”

  Another shout echoed through the canyon as she opened the big wooden front door and went out onto the porch.

  A lone man stood there in the middle of the road about thirty paces from her, a pack on his back and a smile on his face. He wore jeans, a dark shirt, and what looked like tennis shoes.

  He wasn’t any sort of rescue, that was for sure. But he was another survivor.

  She felt her knees get weak as she smiled back at him.

  He was one of the best-looking men she had ever seen. His short brown hair and wide shoulders just made him look sexy standing there in the sun holding the pack on his shoulder. And the smile on his face didn’t hurt the look either.

  He could have been a model in GQ Magazine. Wow!

  “Hi,” he said, waving, but not coming any closer, which she respected. “My name’s Fisher.”

  His voice was low and sexy as well.

  And there was something about that name and his looks that dinged the back of her brain. She felt like she knew this guy from somewhere. She couldn’t place where, but she was sure she had seen him or met him before.

  Completely sure of it.

  “Callie,” she
said.

  “I was hoping others would be alive up here,” Fisher said. “I figured the cave might have saved a few.”

  “It did,” Callie said, not telling him that she was the only one here. “Where are you from?”

  “Eugene, actually,” Fisher said. “I was at the coast when all this happened, so decided to come up here to hole up for the winter. That is if you and the other survivors don’t mind more company. If you do, I can go back to the coast.”

  “Not at all,” she said, her heart leaping at the idea she might have company all winter long. “More the merrier.”

  He stood there, not coming toward her, just staring at her.

  And she just kept staring back as the silence of the hills and the warm afternoon closed in around them.

  Finally she realized it would be up to her to welcome him. He was being very courteous and not trying to just come up.

  Wow, the guy was smart.

  And her little voice told her that there wasn’t a threatening thing about him.

  Sexy yes, but not threatening.

  And over the years she had come to trust that little voice when it came to creepy men.

  He was far from creepy.

  “You hungry?” she asked, breaking the silence of the mountains. “I just made a salad and I got enough for two.”

  He smiled, looking relieved, and nodded. “I am, actually. Thanks.”

  “Come on in.”

  She stood to one side and held the door.

  She couldn’t believe she was trusting this stranger this much. But he seemed so familiar and nothing about him felt threatening at all. More than likely she had seen him in Eugene around the university.

  As he got closer she could see his wonderful green eyes and the smile never seemed to leave his face.

  Then suddenly he looked embarrassed and looked down and went past her into the lodge.

  As he went inside he said, “Wow, this place is really something.”

  He stood there, just inside the door, sort of looking around at the high ceilings and massive stone fireplace and log construction.

  “It is, isn’t it?”