If we found an alien base, I planned to place some charges around it, but what I really wanted to find was a scout or a guard or a straggler who we could capture. I wanted to bring a trophy back to General Glade.
Using the gear in my helmet, I tested the ground for traces of radiation. The forest was clean. “Freeman, you picking up anything I should be concerned about?” I asked.
Freeman surprised me by removing his helmet. The temperature had dropped to below freezing, and steam formed when he breathed. He reached into one of his utility pockets and removed a small laser scope, which he pointed into the sky. “Did you get a good look at the sky?” Freeman asked.
“You mean the colors?” I asked
He looked back at me and nodded. “Take a look through this.”
I pulled off my helmet and aimed the scope into the sky. Sensors within its housing ran an instant retinal diagnostic, then projected a hairline laser as a direct extension of the angle of my vision. Markings along the edges of the scope displayed the distance between my eye and the target. As I looked across the forest, I marked 37’ 3.5‘ between me and a tree. I marked 4’ 1.8‘ between me and Freeman. When I looked up into the sky, both the end of the laser beam and the numbers vanished.
“Something’s wrong with your scope,” I said as I tested it on a tree that was precisely 43’ 7‘ away. I sighted the sky again. Once again the beam and numbers vanished.
Freeman replaced his helmet over his head. I did the same, glad to feel the warmth around my face.
“There is something in this light that disassembles waves,” Freeman said.
I could still see shimmering strokes of blue, red, and yellow above us. It never occurred to me that they might be the frayed edges of the light around us. If no waves could penetrate this light field, we were cut off from the rest of the galaxy. And that made sense. Once the planets were sleeved, they were cut off …we were cut off. The aliens had effectively placed a wall between New Copenhagen and the ships orbiting the planet. Back on Earth, the brass would see the sleeve and write us off before the battle even began. Could that be what had happened on all of the other planets?
“Thomer, Philips, have your men run an equipment check,” I said as I toyed with the idea that mankind might have kicked these aliens’ asses on all of the other 179 populated worlds, and we wouldn’t know it. But I knew that these guys would not have been able to cross a hundred thousand light-years of space, sleeving every planet they passed, unless they had something going for them. There had to be something more, something we were overlooking.
“Sir,” Thomer said, interrupting my thoughts. “Lieutenant, all of the equipment checks out.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” I said. I switched to the open-frequency channel, and said, “Listen up. I want to take one of those bastards home alive. You got that?
“Break into fire teams, we’re going to sweep the woods. I want to find some scouts. If you see a column heading your way, dig in and radio me. If you see some stragglers, I don’t care if they are watching birds, eating babies, or building a memorial to peace in the universe; you will not, repeat, not attack. You contact me, and the entire platoon will converge before you make a move.
“Do you read me, Marines?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came back.
“Head north and west toward their original position. Platoon leader, fan ’em out,” I said. Thomer, my platoon leader, took over from there.
Leaving the hill, I took one last look around the scene. The way the Space Angels had lit this thick forest fascinated me. There were no shadows. The light came from every direction instead of one. They really had flooded the place with some sort of illumination that behaved like liquid.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Lieutenant, we found the place where the aliens landed,” Philips said over the interLink.
“Any unfriendlies?”
“Nah. Not an alien soul in sight.”
“Do they have buildings? Is there any kind of fortification?” I asked.
“Nope, but they’ve got some awful big balls.”
“What are you talking about?” Philips probably thought he was being cryptic; I thought he was being a pain in the ass. “Put up a beacon and stay hidden,” I said.
On my visor, Philips’s virtual beacon looked like a translucent red fence that ran through the forest. The same line would appear on every man’s visor. You could see through it; no point blinding the troops, but it was bright and impossible to overlook. I ordered the entire platoon to converge on that beacon.
The path Philips had taken led through trees, over a creek, and around several clearings. By this time the entire forest was as bright as a desert under a midday sun. As I climbed over a gentle rise, I found Philips sitting on a log “supervising” as his men searched the area.
There, partially hidden by a pocket of trees, sat a perfectly round sphere of light. It was approximately ten feet in diameter and appeared to be constructed of nothing but light. Until the moment I saw that sphere, I had thought that nothing could be as pure and bright as the light filling the forest, but the sphere proved me wrong. The tint shields in my visor doubled themselves to protect my eyes as I stared into the ball of light.
I stood there, staring into that odd bubble of light. It might have been some sort of hologram, but how did they get the light to confine itself? As I examined it, Ray Freeman came up beside me. I did not need to see Freeman’s virtual dog tag to recognize him.
“Is that some kind of portal?” I asked him over an open frequency, not even caring if the rest of the platoon heard me.
The sphere was as transparent as glass and completely empty. By this time the rest of the platoon had gathered around it, and I could see men clearly through its walls.
Until that moment, I had not yet grasped the significance of these aliens traveling across space without a ship. They had somehow ridden in on this light. We were still tramping around the galaxy in specking spaceships while these aliens simply materialized wherever they wanted. Our technology was primitive compared to theirs.
“Are you sure this is how they got here?” I asked Philips.
He pointed to the ground around the sphere. On one side of the sphere the snow remained fresh and white, on the other the aliens had stomped it into soupy mud dotted with footprints.
“Their footsteps start right there,” Philips said. “I figure they must have come out of that thing when they started their march.”
“Why didn’t they leave some sort of guard?” Thomer asked as he came and joined us.
“To guard what?” Philips asked. “What are we going to do, cut the power? It’s a specking ball of light.” He picked up a pebble and tossed it through the sphere.
“Leaving it unguarded doesn’t seem very military,” said Thomer.
I checked the sphere for heat and radiation and found nothing. “It’s so clean it’s practically not there,” I told Freeman.
Freeman removed his helmet and shined his laser scope into the sphere. He replaced the scope in its pouch and put on his helmet.
“Well?” I asked. When Freeman did not respond, I rephrased the question. “Did the beam get through?”
“Yes,” was all Freeman answered.
I was about to ask more when I got a signal from Base Command, and General Glade addressed me. “Lieutenant Harris, I just viewed your report.” Glade’s voice betrayed tension.
“Have they reached the city yet?” I asked.
Huhhhh Huuuhhhh. He cleared his throat. “They’re not here yet, Lieutenant, but it won’t be long now. Do you have anything new to report? Any luck catching one of those bastards?”