The Lost Star Gate (Lost Starship Series Book 9) Read online

  “Communication,” Dana whispered. “He’s never done anything like this before.”

  Riker got pen and paper, placing them before the Draegar.

  The Designer Bosk began to write formulas on the paper. They were tiny numbers and equations. After a time, he stopped, and turned the paper around, looking at the equations at various angles.

  How that helped him think, Maddox didn’t have the slightest idea.

  The Bosk began to write even faster, making scratching sounds as the three of them watched. It was a large cell, and maybe too comfortable in Maddox’s opinion. The bronze-colored humanoid scrunched his brow and made faces. Three times, he stuck out his tongue as if he was thinking deeply. Finally, Draegar 2 took his last blank piece of paper. He studied the others careful and wrote slow and much larger equations on the blank paper.

  “It’s like he thinks we’re stupid,” Dana whispered to Maddox. “We might miss it if he doesn’t write it big enough.”

  At last, Draegar 2 set down the pen, turned the paper and shoved it in front of Maddox.

  The captain peered at it. The paper was filled with numbers and strange squiggles. He reached for it, searching the Draegar as he did so.

  The Bosk nodded.

  “More direct communication,” Dana said. “I’m going to have to reevaluate my thoughts about him.”

  Maddox didn’t know why she said that, but he didn’t really care at this point.

  “Do you understand his equations?” he asked Dana.

  The doctor stood beside the captain as she stared at the equations.

  “No,” Dana finally said. “I haven’t a clue what that all means.”

  “Chief Technician?” Maddox asked Andros. While the Draegar wrote his equations, the captain had summoned the Kai-Kaus chief to join them.

  Stout Andros Crank now looked at the paper. He even took it from Maddox and scanned the equations. Afterward, he gingerly set the paper on the table and turned to Maddox.

  “The equations baffle me,” Andros admitted.

  Maddox’s shoulders slumped. He’d thought the Chief Technician was about to solve their problem.

  “Let me look,” Riker said.

  “Be my guest,” Maddox said, saying it in such a way that maybe pigs might fly after all.

  Riker moved up, standing over the paper, turning it several times and finally beginning to nod.

  “You know what that means?” Maddox asked, stunned.

  “I do,” Riker said. “It means we should give the paper to the professor and hope the Methuselah Man knows what it says.”

  “Sergeant,” Maddox said.

  The captain reached out, and it seemed he was going to strike his assistant. At the last moment, Maddox appeared to change his mind as he patted the old Intelligence agent on the left shoulder. “Good idea. Let’s give it a try.”

  -79-

  Ludendorff was in a bad way, and the professor almost knew it.

  He woke in a dreaming state. No, wait. That wasn’t quite right. He dreamed in an awakened province. That seemed better than the original statement, and yet…it was wrong.

  Ludendorff bumped against a padded wall as he considered the ramifications of the idea. He staggered backward, hardly aware of what he’d done.

  He ached all over, and he wasn’t sure why. An outside observer could have told him. He’d been walking into padded walls for over three days. He had bruises all over his body and face. He—

  The professor’s fingers of his right hand made sharp motions. Maybe he was trying to snap his fingers. It was such a pathetic attempt, however, that it was impossible for others to tell what he attempted to do.

  The professor tried it three more times, finally making a clumsy approximation of a finger snap.

  “Eureka,” he said.

  He dreamed in an awakened state. He moved like a sleepwalker here and there, working through strange equations and formulas. He saw past events that had nothing to do with humanity. He floated in ether among hundreds of fellow Builders. They had a Council of Ways and Means, deciding on these puppets called Methuselah Men.

  That council meeting had taken place four thousand years ago, but to Ludendorff with the myriad of memories jammed in his skull, it seemed as if it had just taken place. To juggle that memory with the events going on around him now—

  Ludendorff staggered backward yet again because he’d crashed against a padded wall…yet again. As he staggered backward, he tripped over his own feet, slamming his back and the back of his head against the padded cell floor.

  He lay there for a time, reliving an event that had taken place a mere one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two years ago.

  Sometimes, it felt as if he was going mad. He had such random thoughts and so freaking many of them that he was finding it difficult to sort one from the other. Maybe the worst thing of all was that he was having trouble remembering who he was.

  He believed he might be a minor Builder in a Morning Sect of the Afternoon Culture. At other times, he believed he was the Methuselah Man Trainer. The trouble with that thought was having to indulge his time with the apish brutes of the third planet of an insignificant star system—

  Ludendorff chuckled to himself as he rolled over onto his belly and slithered across the floor like the deceiving serpent.

  Serpent or Sergeant Riker, that was the question. He’d told that oaf a hundred times—

  Ludendorff froze as a moment of clarity struck. He was a man, a human, to be precise, the wisest and most profound of the Methuselah Men that had helped dimwitted humanity climb into the Space Age.

  “Help,” he whispered.

  Ludendorff realized that he badly needed help because he had woefully miscalculated not so many days ago. He had shoved—

  Ludendorff sat up in a cross-legged yoga pose as he bent his head, clutching it and moaning. He had damned himself by overachieving again. This time, he had gone too far. He could not hold all the Builder memories in his ape head. He had—

  The very pads opened before him as several people rushed into the cell. It almost seemed as if they had timed their appearance with one of his brief spells of sanity.

  “Darling,” the prettiest among them said to him.

  Ludendorff mouthed the word, “Dana?” without adding voice to it.

  “He’s lucid,” the pretty thing said.

  “Show him,” the tallest of the trio said. That one seemed domineering and pushy. Ludendorff supposed he might know that one, and he believed he had reason to dislike him as well.

  Ludendorff began to chuckle to himself.

  “What’s so funny?” the oldest of the three asked.

  “Not now, Sergeant. Show him,” the tall one told the pretty one.

  “Half-breed,” Ludendorff said, and he began chuckling once more.

  The old one—Sergeant Riker—glanced at the tall one.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Maddox said between clenched teeth. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  “I do,” Ludendorff said.

  “Darling,” the pretty one said. “What does this mean?” And she shoved a sheet of paper at him.

  Ludendorff snatched the paper from her, holding it between his hands and scanning fast. He began to rock back and forth as he read and analyzed the formulas and equations.

  “Who wrote this?” Ludendorff said.

  “Who do you think?” the tall one asked.

  Ludendorff peered at… “Maddox,” he said. “You’re Captain Maddox.”

  “That’s right. Now, who wrote that?”

  Ludendorff glanced at the paper in his hands. Suddenly, in a swift fit of rage, the professor tore the paper into pieces and threw the pieces into the air.

  “That was just a copy,” Maddox said.

  “Draegar 2, the Designer, wrote the formulas,” Ludendorff said. “A child could see that.”

  “But you’re no child,” Maddox said.

  Ludendorff almost lost his connection with this waking dream
as a dozen new ideas knocked on his consciousness.

  “Darling,” the pretty one said. “Hang in there. We need you so desperately.”

  Ludendorff swallowed hard. “Dana,” he whispered. “Help me. I need help.”

  “I’m trying, Professor,” she said.

  “I helped you come back,” Ludendorff said. “You have to help me.”

  Dana glanced at Maddox.

  “Go away,” Ludendorff told Maddox. “You’re spoiling everything by your presence.”

  “What did Draegar 2 say in the paper?” Maddox asked. “Once I know that, I’ll leave you alone with Dana.”

  Ludendorff almost lost it there—who did the damn captain think he was?—but he held onto his sanity for a few more moments because Dana had asked him to.

  “The nexus is mobile,” Ludendorff said. “Draegar 2 figured out its propulsion system and how to track it. It’s ingenious, but it has a limited scope.”

  “Can you show us where the nexus is?” Maddox asked.

  “I told you what the paper means,” Ludendorff said querulously. “You have to go now, you promised.”

  “Yes,” Maddox said. “I did promise. And I will go. But we need the coordinates. I’m going to have Dana use the Builder stone to fix your mind. That might hurt her—”

  “No!” Ludendorff shouted. “Don’t do that. I’ll kill you if you force her to do that.”

  “Then, restore your sanity through force of will,” Maddox said. “Otherwise, I’m risking Dana to fix you, just like you fixed her.”

  At that point, Ludendorff turned sullen, putting his head down and concentrating like he’d never concentrated before.

  “Stone,” the professor whispered. “Give me…the…Builder stone.”

  -80-

  Ludendorff screamed as he clutched onto the white polygonal stone. He stood in a stark room with both hands gripping the slowly heating object.

  The connection with the ancient stone expanded his mind, but it still wasn’t enough to contain all the compressed Builder data in his gray matter. He raved because the process was daunting and bewildering, and he shouted because he knew what he had to do, but he just couldn’t get himself to do it.

  He had to erase most of the alien data in his mind or he would never be sane again.

  Yet, that was unthinkable. He was Professor Ludendorff, the one who knew. All his life, he’d striven to learn more and understand more deeply. Now, he possessed knowledge as he’d never known it. He could solve a thousand mysteries…if he had enough time to sort through all this data.

  It was all there in his mind, swirling and bumping up against his previous knowledge.

  As he gripped the polygonal stone, using the increased brainpower to think and sort, he realized a proverbial lesson. He was like the storybook man who had found a magic lamp, rubbing it until a genie appeared. “I want a mountain of gold,” the man said, using one of his wishes.

  The genie waved his blue arms, and a mountain of gold buried the man, killing him.

  Ludendorff had his mountain of knowledge, and it was killing him, or incapacitating him. He would never have believed that a man could know too much. His brain was simply too puny to contain such a bewildering mountain of knowledge.

  Ludendorff stood in the stark room, weeping. He could fix this if he wanted to, but the idea of it drove him crazy with frustration.

  “To delete or not to delete,” Ludendorff whispered. “That is the question.”

  He laughed sadly afterward as the tears continued to stream down his cheeks.

  He was like the dwarf-king who had searched for the fabled diamond of his clan, and found it just as the dragon who had stolen it came zooming down from the heavens. The fabled diamond was too heavy to allow him to run away in time. He could have the diamond and lose his life, or he could lose the diamond and save his life.

  Ludendorff could almost hear Maddox ask him a question from the Good Book. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”

  The obvious answer was that there was no profit in that.

  “But I want to keep my knowledge,” Ludendorff shouted.

  Even though it’s driving you mad? a different part of him asked.

  “Yes, damnit, yes,” the professor wept.

  As he struggled with his dilemma, the polygonal stone continued to heat up.

  Then, a hatch opened.

  Ludendorff expected Maddox to come in and berate him, or Dana to plead with him. He wouldn’t listen to Maddox; the captain had ordered him around for too long. And he hoped Dana would not ask him this, for he might come to hate her over time for what he’d lost.

  Neither of them showed up, though. Instead, Sergeant Riker waltzed in, nodding slowly as if this was exactly as he’d expected things to be.

  “What do you know about this?” Ludendorff snarled.

  Riker smiled so his old, seamed face wrinkled up.

  “That’s not an answer,” Ludendorff said.

  Riker used a hand and tapped his other arm.

  “What’s that mean?” Ludendorff asked.

  “That arm is bionic,” Riker said.

  Ludendorff frowned.

  “I lost it in a blast,” Riker said. “The doc said he had to amputate what was left or I’d die. Do you know what I told him?”

  “That you can’t live without your real arm?”

  Riker chuckled, shaking his head. “I said, ‘What are you waiting for, Doc? Cut the damn thing off. Give me one of them fancy bionic arms in its place.’”

  “I can’t attach a bionic brain to my head, you oaf,” Ludendorff said.

  Riker shrugged. “So you lose a little knowledge. Big whoop-de-do. You’re alive and able to think. What’s more important, knowing so much you can’t think, or knowing enough and being able to use it cleverly to achieve your ends?”

  Ludendorff blinked at the sergeant even as smoke began to smolder from his hands.

  “It’s up to you,” Riker said. “If it were me, I wouldn’t hesitate. But just in case you can’t let go, good-bye, Professor. It was interesting knowing you.”

  “You think I’m making a mistake?” Ludendorff asked.

  Riker glanced at the smoke curling from underneath the professor’s hands. “I think you’re running out of time. We all are. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?”

  “Get out of here,” Ludendorff snarled. “I don’t need your—”

  No, the professor told himself. What did it profit him to have all this knowledge and be unable to use it? The sergeant had a point.

  Ludendorff sighed deeply. He knew what he needed to do, and he was going to do it. If he didn’t—

  The professor shut his eyes. He squeezed his eyelids tightly and began to delete one ancient Builder memory after another. He chose a spot in his mind, and he began shoving knowledge out of his brain from there, erasing, erasing and erasing treasured memories that had never rightfully belonged to man.

  Time was running down, so he mass-deleted hordes of compressed memories, losing some of his own in the process. He kept some of the ancient knowledge, as well, but it was hit and miss because time had run out on him.

  Then, Ludendorff truly began howling in agony as the stone cooked his poor hands.

  The hatch slid up once more, and Maddox rushed in, spraying foam that hissed and sizzled against the stone. Luckily, Riker tackled the professor then, ripping his melded palms from the polygonal object, swaths of burned flesh going with it. There was blood, far too much blood, but the two Star Watch operatives freed the professor from the killing linkage with the ancient Builder stone.

  -81-

  Twelve hours and a surgery later for Ludendorff found Captain Maddox on the bridge, directing the starship onto yet another heading.

  He had a link with Ludendorff, who was in a medical facility surrounded by med-techs and a fawning Dana.

  On a side-screen near Maddox’s command chair, Ludendorff sat up in bed. The Methuselah Man was wearing a white gown
and had heavy mitts over his healing hands. He looked paler than usual, but there was sanity in his eyes, although he seemed unbelievable sad.

  “What a loss,” the professor said again. “Gone into the ether—the lost knowledge—a shame, a true and irreparable shame.”

  Maddox might have told the professor to cheer up, but he’d heard the Methuselah Man’s complaints far too often during these past twenty minutes. It was getting tedious beyond endurance.

  “Sir,” Valerie said from her station on the bridge. “The scouts…”

  Maddox looked up at the main screen. Through heavy gases and swirling dust particles, he spied fifty-plus Swarm scout-ships. From what they had been able to observe so far, the Swarm armada had been sending more such scouting teams in all the directions of the Omega Nebula. It would seem the bugs were sick of being lost and had found their own answer to the missing nexus problem.

  Maddox turned to the side-screen, “Professor, your new heading will take us toward Swarm scouts.”

  “I can’t help that,” Ludendorff said. “According to Draegar 2’s analysis, that’s what these readings are telling me to do.”

  Andros and his team had set up a special panel and rigged it beside the professor’s bed. As Dana, or other techs, manipulated the board, Ludendorff interpreted the data. He did so, he said, according to Draegar 2’s formulas.

  “If the Swarm scouts see us…” Maddox said.

  “I know very well what you’re implying,” Ludendorff said in a bad-tempered voice. “But that’s not my problem. I’m here telling you how you can find the nexus. It’s in the direction I just said.”

  “But according to our sensors nothing’s there,” Maddox said.

  “I’m telling you, something is there; you just can’t see it. You have to go closer if you hope to see it.”

  “But closer will bring us nearer the—”

  Ludendorff shouted obscenities as he slapped his mitted hands against his bed-sheeted knees. The hard contact made him stretch his neck and howl with pain.