"It had to be a ship of some kind," Hunter replied. "Judging from all this stuff, maybe even two."
He swept his quadtrol around the area. "It wasn't a prop-core ship," he said. "There's absolutely no leftover subatomics in here. There's a lot of other weird stuff, but no subatomics. Anywhere."
He looked around, trying to conjure up a vision of what might have been built here. Whatever they were, they're gone now, he thought. But when?
He leaned down, felt the floor, and got his answer. It was still warm. "Gone — but not that long ago," he said.
He also noted that it appeared the builders had simply dropped their tools after they'd finished. Same with the staging involved. "And it was a big craft, whatever it was," he added.
Again, Zoloff could only agree. There were literally hundreds of electron torches and other hand tools and robotic-tools scattered about.
"But look at how the tools are dispersed," Hunter went on.
Zoloff didn't know what he meant at first. To him, it just looked like a mad scramble of workers had ensued after whatever they were working on was finally finished — with no need to clean up after themselves.
But Hunter saw something else.
He told Zoloff and Annie to join him in the middle of the huge floor. Then he faced Annie in one direction and Zoloff in another and told them to walk backward until they encountered a piece of staging or a pile of discarded tools. Hunter meanwhile walked backward in a third direction. Counting off their steps as they went, all three stopped at nearly the same moment, this after walking one hundred paces. Then they held their hands out from their sides and pointed to the person on either side of them.
The three of them stood there like this for a long moment. If they had truly walked to the limits of where the vessel had been built, thereby getting a rough outline of its shape, then what was constructed here had not been a typical wedge-shaped Empire design.
Rather, it had been built as a circle. Or a saucer.
Zoloff eyes went wide as this finally sank in. "They built a craft that didn't need the Big Generator to fly fast," he said, repeating CX's words. "Something to deliver a devastating blow to Doomsday 212 and the mid-Two Arm. But obviously, they wouldn't waste their time building an ion ballast engine. They must have been building something else."
Hunter looked back at him grimly. "Or someone was building it for them."
He hurried over to Zoloff. "In the desert world attraction " he said, "I came into a room where there was a flying saucer-shaped vehicle. Those Spetsnaz soldiers wanted me to fly it, before the big gunfight broke out, that is."
Zoloff just laughed. "That was just a figment of my own imagination," he replied. "We were always hearing rumors from America that you had a real UFO hidden away in your Area 51. We, the great Soviet Union, did not have such a thing! But like all things American, we wanted one, too. We did not want to be left behind in the flying saucer gap. But again, it was just a fancy on my part. Our brave soldiers go in and try to steal the Americans' most treasured and secret possession. Thrills and spills result…"
Hunter had to laugh darkly at that last part. Those thrills and spills brought him to within an inch of losing his life, or so it seemed.
"But Doctor, here's the strange thing," he explained to Zoloff. "I've seen these saucers. Not just back from where I came from, but here, in this time period."
Zoloff was shocked, and it showed on his face. His eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open.
"Flying saucers? They exist? For real?" he gasped.
"I saw them during a battle for a tiny moon called Qez," Hunter revealed. "It was while I was looking for the Last Americans. This little moon way out on the end of the Five Arm, a place where you'd would fall off if you went any farther. The people there were at war with a very mysterious enemy. This enemy had weapons that went way beyond the scope of what the Empire has now. Huge moving forts. Frightening destracto-rays. And at least one flying saucer."
"Incredible!" Zoloff declared. Annie hugged Hunter tighter.
"I even found myself inside one of them," Hunter went on. "Just as it was trying to make its escape. It was a vile place within, as well as a place out of time. But I can tell you the technology employed by whoever owned it was frightening. And very, very advanced."
"But who were they?" Zoloff wanted to know.
Hunter hesitated, his mind bringing him back to that day and to a similar experience he'd lived through during a mind ring trip back to when the Empires first began. It was a concept so horrible, he really didn't like to dwell on it or even talk about it. But Zoloff deserved an answer.
"Frankly," he said, "it wasn't a question of who built these saucers — but what built them."
Now Zoloff's eyebrows shot up so fast, they nearly touched his hairpiece.
"You mean…?"
But these were the only words that came out before they heard a very loud bang from the far end of the warehouse. A small army of SG troops had needlessly blown the door off and were rushing toward them, dressed in biohazard suits.
"How are we going to get out of this?" Zoloff cried.
Hunter was stumped; strangely, they hadn't planned for this — and he really didn't know why. But it was quite a fix. They were stuck here, on a very hostile planet, surrounded by the enemy, who had finally decided to move in on them. And even if they were able by some miracle to get out of the huge building, they were still deep inside enemy territory, with millions of SG troops and thousands of armed ships all around them, and a long way from the dizzylando or any other safe harbor.
So how indeed were they going to get out of this?
That's when Hunter's hand went to his pocket, where he kept his flag, his picture of Dominique, and now Annie's note — and found something else: the Twenty 'n Six the Imperial spy had given him, a long time ago, in the living room of Star Legion's cottage.
"Stand back," he said. "I don't know what's in here, but it better be good."
He pushed the capsule's activation button, and suddenly a cloud of yellow smoke appeared in front of them. There was another bright flash, and when it died down, a spacecraft was sitting in front of them.
But not just an ordinary spacecraft.
It was about three times the size of Hunter's long-lost Flying Machine, and just a little smaller than a typical Imperial spacefighter. It was shaped like a wedge as most Empire ships were, but it had a very exaggerated tail, and its fuselage was segmented in highly stylized patterns. It was held together by proton bolts, a technology that had not been used for at least a millennia. A mild sizzling noise was coming from somewhere underneath its hood, the telltale sign of a prop core. No doubt about it, though, this vessel was very, very old.
Hunter was astounded. He could only imagine that this was the same spacecraft that had brought the Imperial spy to Doomsday 212—a vessel he then gave to Hunter as a lifeboat of sorts. But it was a very strange-looking contraption. "Have you ever seen anything like this?" he asked Zoloff.
The doctor got very excited. "Seen it?" he roared. "I built it! Many years ago."
The craft's canopy suddenly opened. Underneath its flared lip they saw the spacecraft's name: KosmoVox.
"See!" Zoloff cried. "A fine Russian name!"
Hunter just stared back at him — but then they heard another loud boom come from the other end of the warehouse. The doors had opened down there, and they could see, though just barely, another small army of SG troops flooding in. They, too, were wearing protective bio suits and carrying huge hand weapons.
"I'll have to get the history lesson later," Hunter told Zoloff. "At the moment, I think it's time we got going."