Finally, Pater Tomm nudged the others aside, took his handy blackjack from his back pocket, and slammed it down on the lock. It sprang open immediately.
The CIA men were shocked. Hunter and Zarex just shook their heads.
"Well done, Padre," Hunter murmured.
Inside the box was a large spherical capsule, about a foot long and the same again around. It shimmered with a shade of bluish emerald. The CIA men had never seen anything like it. But to the three space travelers, it was quite familiar.
"Could that possibly be what I think it is?" Zarex asked with a gasp.
It was a holo-girl capsule. The shape, the color, the shimmering green. They were all the same. But this one had to be at least ten times larger than the handheld ones the space travelers were familiar with.
Hunter turned to Zarex. "One of yours?" he asked.
Zarex huffed and studied this object's control panel for a moment. This he was schooled in. He very casually pushed a succession of light panels. Suddenly, a beam shot out of the side of the capsule. Everyone took a step back. There was a blinding flash, and then a cloud of deatomizing smoke. A holographic projection began to take shape. The image flickered, appeared solid, then flickered again. When it finally stabilized, they found a rather large female standing before them. She was holding an enormous gun.
The CIA men were shocked, bewildered. That this amazon could so suddenly appear like this — they'd simply never seen anything like it before. It was more like a horror movie for them. A being from the distant past/future, unlocked from a magic box, proceeds to demolecularize them all?
"It's all right," Tomm comforted them. "Some of us see these things all the time."
But the truth was, this was unlike any holo-girl the spacemen had ever encountered. She was much bigger, much more mus-cular, much rowg/ier-looking than the models currently in use throughout the Galaxy. And she wasn't exactly built for speed. She was more along the lines of Zarex's body type. It took the spacemen a few moments to realize that what they were looking at was not a holo-girl at all, at least not the erotic, sexually pleasing ones they knew.
Rather, this female projection was a soldier, clearly made not for sex but for war. Her uniform was bulky; her weapon was huge and ancient-looking. Her combat belt, boots, and helmet all looked like relics of days gone by, most especially the jet pack on her back, a cumbersome two-tube assembly that gave the wearer a certain amount of airborne capability but hadn't been seen in the Milky Way in two millennia at least.
She was staring back at them, a slightly mystified look on her face, eyes darting back and forth, accessing her data banks. She scanned the CIA men first, in their denim and western boots, then the space travelers. She raised her huge rifle in a cautious stance. Everyone froze. Could a holograph's weapon shoot real stuff? No one knew. A tense moment went through the room. Then, as so often happened when no one else knew what to do, Pater Tomm stepped forward.
"You are among friends here," he gently told the skittish projection. "There is no need to harm anyone, because no one is going to harm you."
"Where am I?" she asked them, her voice garbled, mechanical.
Tomm did his best to explain the surroundings to her. She checked a device on her wrist.
"This is the 73rd century!"
Tomm nodded. "By some accounts, it is."
This was news to the CIA agents.
"What year are you from?" Tomm asked her.
The holo-spy replied, "My original program date was in the year 3777. That was 3,500 years ago!"
She paused, gathering her thoughts. Old circuits were coming to life. "I have been programmed to tell you my background before disclosing my mission here… "
She explained that she was a combat-intelligence operative. Her job was to infiltrate enemy installations prior to battle and gather information on them. In essence, she was a spy.
"Does this mean that the holo-girls of today evolved from spy technology centuries ago?" Zarex asked Hunter in a whisper.
"It must be," Hunter whispered back. "They could have created the first holographs to look and feel and talk and walk like a real human being, in an effort to make them blend in. What better spy could there be?"
Tomm was nodding, but with disgust. "And then for man to design one model that could be used for more carnal activities; well it's a concept that really doesn't involve that much of a leap in imagination, does it?"
The projection went down a long list of her abilities: above-normal strength, X-ray vision, instant recall. Of course, everything she saw and heard was recorded on the primitive version of a viz disk. And judging by the size of her muscles, though not designed primarily for combat, she would have had little trouble defending herself.
"Why are you here?" Tomm asked her finally. "Do you know?"
"I was sent here in advance of a combat mission on this planet," she said, eyes again darting back and forth. "I was programmed by a civilization that was allied with your ancestors around the year 3778. Our goal was to help free you, the people of this planet—"
"Free us?" several asked at once.
The holo-girl could see the confusion on the assembled faces. They didn't know what she was talking about.
"Yes, free you? Help you? To break you out of here?"
More confused looks.
"You do know you're incarcerated here?" she asked with some uncertainty.
Everyone in the vault shook their heads no.
"We think our ancestors may have been brought here from someplace else," Gordon managed to say, "But—"
"So you don't know that you're in a prison camp here?"
"Prison camp?" several of the CIA men gasped at once.
"This planet. This whole system," she said. "It's a prison… and you are still here. Even after all this time. You are still inmates."
The CIA men all tried to say something but couldn't. Even the space travelers were at a loss. How could an entire star system be a prison camp?
The holo-spy read their faces and just shook her head.
"I suggest you take me someplace where you can all sit down," she said. "This might take awhile."
14
The black panel van flew through the gates of the White House, waved on by the small army of uniformed secret service agents assembled there.
It was three in the morning. The streets of Washington, D.C., were deserted as usual. Nevertheless, acting under the orders of the CIA, the D.C. police had blocked off all streets within a ten-block radius of the Executive Mansion. Several highways had been sealed as well. In all, the van's ride in from Weather Mountain had taken less than a half hour.
The van pulled around the back of the White House and stopped at the servants' entrance. It was here that the Secret Service's video surveillance cameras could be shut down without anyone noticing. The three passengers were hustled out of the van, each wearing a long, hooded cape. They were followed by Gordon and two of the seven elderly CIA agents.
The spacemen were brought into the White House kitchen and halted there. They were surrounded by yet another breed of well-dressed government agent, the Secret Service's presidential protection team. These guys all wore gray suits. They ran metal detectors over the three travelers and frisked them as well, but they could not find anything. That was another good thing about the Twenty 'n Six boxes. They could be set for intradimensional recovery.
This meant they just weren't there, until the owner reached for them.
The president was awakened and told that some unexpected visitors had arrived and that the CIA was insisting that he meet them — right now.