01 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Read online

  Five hundred years!

  Five hundred years passed while Buck’s ship tumbled aimlessly through space. On Earth his mishap was headline news for a few days. The newspapers bannered the tragedy of the lost hero and his unfortunate ship. The television newscasters ran and reran and re-reran tapes of his lift-off, of the guidance and mission control centers in Cape Canaveral and Houston, interviews with his flight controller, his air force buddies, his family, his old school chums, the milkman who delivered milk to his house and the teacher who had scolded him for flying paper airplanes instead of concentrating on social studies when he was in the sixth grade.

  There were even proposals to mount a rescue mission for Buck. But saner heads prevailed. It would take too long to outfit and launch the rescue ship. It would never reach Buck’s ship anyway. And if it did it would only find a corpse.

  Better to let the space-martyr have a hero’s burial in deep space. Better let his tumbling spaceship carry him to that strange outworldly valhalla where the dead astronauts and cosmonauts of all nations joined in their own fraternity of eternal space travel.

  In a week the story was off page one and inside the papers; off the prime-time news and onto the features and backgrounders and the talk shows.

  A few months later it was no longer Buck Rogers, but Buck Who? And then he was forgotten.

  Dynasties rose and fell.

  Wars were fought.

  The earth teetered—and tipped.

  ONE

  An incredibly antiquated spaceship tumbled aimlessly, out of control, through the blackness between the planets. Why it had never found its way out of the solar system, to drift on forever in the space between the stars, was a matter of cosmic laws. In its disastrous tumble, Buck Rogers’ ship had failed to reach solar escape velocity. Falling freely, with no propulsion system functioning, it had reached the farthest point of its orbit and then arched back toward its point of origin.

  Decades had passed, then centuries, and now the ship was back, its statuelike occupant preserved as if the strange mishaps had transpired yesterday instead of five hundred years ago, back in the lost days of the twentieth century. For this was the twenty-fifth century, and the world was a different place than it had been in the past.

  Buck’s ship glided on its slow but steady tack through deep space when there was a sudden eruption in the star-punctuated space around it. The white heat of laser bolts exploded into a ball of flame to one side of the ship, sent it rocking anew, tumbling more erratically than ever as it continued on its own lengthy orbit.

  Where had the laser come from? Had Buck’s ship found its way at last back to earth, and were there still ancient hunter-killer satellites orbiting in space around the earth, ready to blast down any spacecraft perceived as belonging to an enemy?

  Suddenly a voice, sinister and bass in tone, spoke. “That was a warning blast. Retard your speed and bring your ship about or the next will destroy you!”

  But the derelict ship continued to tumble on, its systems dead, its pilot unconscious, in a state of complete mental and physical stasis for the past five hundred years.

  The voice that had spoken belonged to a dark, tight-lipped man with cold eyes and an unsavory cast to his face. This was the man Kane—known behind his back as Killer Kane. Whether the title bore any relationship to the original killer, Cain, is moot. But in this man’s case, the title was apt.

  He sat at the controls of a space attack vessel, his big hands guiding the controls with a competence that bordered on contempt. To either flank of his ship a sister craft soared, and Kane, like a veteran halfback directing two powerful but inexperienced downfield blockers as they cleared a path for him, barked his directions to the ships to his left and his right.

  “Another round,” Kane gritted.

  The laser flared. Buck’s ship jounced at the nearness of the explosion.

  “Closer,” Kane muttered. Not only were his two subordinates fighting at his direction, but his own ship was armed as well and he fired his own lasers, pressing the firing stud on his control rod as Buck’s tumbling antique came within his sights. The five hundred year old ship rocked and tumbled, unable either to fight back or to flee.

  In his space-fighter, Kane commanded his two subordinates. “Stand by to finish him off. Five… four… three…”

  He pressed the throttle of his fighter forward. The ship, already coursing through space at incredible speed, lurched ahead still faster, faster, closing in for the kill, ready to blast its helpless prey into a blossoming spray of white-hot space debris.

  Meanwhile, the interior of the derelict craft presented as eerie an aspect as ever human eye had perceived. Think of any explorer opening a crypt sealed and forgotten for hundreds and thousands of years, breaking the seals of time, peering within, breath stilled, heart leaping, hands icy, blood pounding. And then…

  Through the window of Buck Rogers’ derelict spaceship could be seen a sight that might have been found in a deep-freeze. The window itself was frosted, not with condensation on its outside, for space is a vacuum and contains no water vapor. But from within, from the gases that had flooded the cabin in the last frantic seconds of the meteor storm, from the water vapor dissolved in the very atmosphere of the ship.

  And inside that strange deep-freeze, the slumped form of a bearded man, his chin pressed against the collar of his flight suit, his head leaning toward the frosted window. And not merely the inner surface of the window, but the entire interior of the spaceship’s cabin was covered with a soft, frosted glaze. And in that glaze lay the man himself, covered entirely with white condensation.

  Apparently the state of stasis was less than one hundred percent effective. For Buck Rogers had entered his ship a clean-shaven man, and he was now heavily bearded, his hair grown long and shaggy in the five hundred years he had lain in the tumbling derelict.

  Kane piloted his fighter craft alongside Buck’s ship with competence borne of a hundred space battles, a thousand maneuvers.

  Through the double thickness of the window of his own ship and Buck Rogers’, he peered with those cold dark eyes of his.

  “He appears dead,” Kane rasped.

  “Then let’s disintegrate him,” a second voice spoke coldly. “Before Princess Ardala’s ship sails through here and hits the old derelict.”

  Kane shook his head. “No,” he considered coldly. “There’s something about that ship. I’ve never seen anything like it. No, this may be a prize worth exploiting.”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Prepare to take the derelict in tow. Open a communication channel to Princess Ardala. Inform her that we’re boarding a hostile spacecraft, and will report to her later with details of what we find.”

  Kane clicked off his communicator and continued to peer through the double thickness of window that separated him from Buck Rogers, peering into the sleeping face of the ancient spaceman, peering as if measuring the man and assessing the contents of the ship in which he lay.

  Consider this: if some World War II aviator, Jimmy Doolittle or Richard Bong or any of the others, had risen from some airbase in Europe or America or in the Pacific theater, and had come face to face with a Saturn V spaceship just lifting off its pad and heading at five thousand miles per hour for orbit, he’d surely have returned to base, headed straight for the nearest field hospital, and turned himself in for treatment for a case of acute combat fatigue.

  They just wouldn’t have believed it!

  Now consider this: William Rogers, Captain USAF, lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a bright morning in the year 1987. He is caught in a meteor storm above the Earth’s atmosphere. He knows nothing for the next five hundred years, and then…

  A massive ship moved through space. It was not ten or twenty or fifty years more advanced than Buck’s craft had been. And it was not merely as much larger as the Consolidated B-36 was than the Wrights’ first plane. No, the difference in technology and in size was five centuries!

  Buck Rogers’
craft lay on the floor of a giant launching bay as a wooden viking craft would have lain on the deck of the QE2. And around it swarmed a throng of scurrying figures, a mix of curious technicians and watchful-eyed soldiers. Again, it was as if some experimental Breguet helicopter of early-1930s vintage had mysteriously appeared over the Gulf of Tonkin and landed safely on the deck of an American aircraft carrier in 1970.

  The twin reactions would have been an arousal of startled curiosity and a wild, almost paranoid panic of the security forces!

  Now, on the great starship in whose bay Buck Rogers’ half-millennium-old craft lay motionless, a swarm of inquiring technicians peered and prodded at the ancient spacecraft, frantic with curiosity to resolve its mysteries—while at the same time stem-visaged starship troopers, Draconian Guards of the Realm, circulated among them, weapons at the ready.

  And at the command position stood one whose air of authority would brook no opposition.

  Kane.

  He looked through the window of the ancient spaceship and some instinct prompted him, as he gazed on Buck Rogers’ motionless form, to mutter, “He’s alive!”

  They moved the rigid form of the space pilot, laid him on a surgical table ringed with bright spotlights. They attached electronic probes, chemical tubes, stimulators and resuscitators to the unresisting form. Powerful beams of a nearby blood-red intensity pulsed in the tubes.

  And Buck Rogers’ eyelids fluttered!

  The stateroom was magnificent. It had the out-fittings of the captain’s quarters on the most luxurious of ancient sea-yachts, yet it could serve as its mistress’ audience chamber, her sitting room, or her boudoir at her choice.

  There was a canopied bed, covered with thick, soft, white furs of the most exotic animals, striped and tanned and fitted to suit the whim of their powerful owner. There were pillows and mirrors and perfume dispensers, satin quilts and snow-white fur robes to please the most demanding of sybarites.

  Lounging in the midst of this barbaric splendour was the one creature to whom its beauty, its luxury, its promise of hedonistic indulgence and its hint of barbaric sadism, were all fitted with perfect appropriateness: a woman stunningly gowned, her raiment perfectly designed to set off her long, flowing hair, her rich, smooth olive skin, her dark, slightly slanted eyes, her voluptuous body whose generous curves were accentuated rather than concealed by the flowing lines of her gown.

  This was the Princess Ardala.

  At a signal from the companionway outside her stateroom the Princess called a single imperious word: “Enter.”

  The dark figure of Kane appeared, an expression of deeply troubled concern on his face.

  His meditation was interrupted by the Princess Ardala’s annoyed comment. “What of our intruder, Kane, that is so important it could not await my rising?”

  Kane stepped forward with thoughtfully measured strides. “The man lives,” he announced. “And why, is a puzzle.”

  “You don’t know why he lives?” Ardala echoed. “Have you brought me this riddle to deal with, as a dimensional puzzle is tossed to a troublesome child, to keep her busy at play while the adults tend to more serious matters?”

  Kane shook his head, ignoring the jibe. “The puzzle is for me to decipher, my princess. The ship is antiquated, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the whole span of stars—for that matter I’ve never seen its like outside the pages of some illustrated history book.”

  Impatiently, Ardala snapped, “Kane, get on with—”

  “He was frozen, my princess!”

  “Frozen?”

  “A combination of gases,” the man explained. “Oxygen, freon, cryogen.” He paced as if reciting a chemistry lesson. “Ozone.” He nodded his head, ticked off the substances on his fingers. “Methalon. Almost a perfect balance.”

  Ardala shrugged her smooth shoulders petulantly. “There are techniques used in cases of surgery and in the suspension of terminal illnesses throughout the civilized galaxy.”

  “Yes,” Kane agreed. “Yes, there are—today! But this man is another matter. His ship, my princess!”

  “Kane, I have no patience for lectures, any more than I have for solving riddles. Come to the point or leave my presence!”

  “It’s the instrumentation on the ship! It too was stopped. Our scientists have taken readouts from its circuitry, and they indicate that this man and his ship have been frozen solid since the year 1987!”

  Now curiosity conquered annoyance in the Princess Ardala. “You’re telling me, Kane, that—”

  “Precisely, I am! That man must be over five hundred years old, my princess!”

  Her eyebrows flew upward in surprise. “You’re serious!”

  “Completely! The pilot of that ship was frozen by whatever disaster overcame his ship, and then preserved by that combination of gases, so instantaneously and so perfectly that now he is fully preserved and… living!”

  The princess moved subtly on her fur-quilted bed. It was almost as if a fascinating man had entered the room, and she was arranging herself to display her charms in their most subtle but most alluring pose. “Preserved,” she purred. “But—preserved young or preserved old?”

  “Very young,” Kane responded.

  “No—shall I say, defects—from the ordeal?”

  “Fortunately for the man,” Kane said, “we are quite advanced in the science of cryogenics.”

  “I’ve never met a man five hundred years old,” Ardala almost crooned. She seemed lost in contemplation for the barest fraction of a moment. Then she said, “Prepare him for an audience.”

  Kane did not assent immediately. “I would suggest that you allow us a little time. We have been inducing massive amounts of oxygen into his system, to resuscitate him. I’m afraid he might babble incoherently for a little while. You know, there’s such a thing as oxygen intoxication.”

  Ardala’s eyes flashed. She was not accustomed to having her wishes denied, however subservient the manner of the other. “I will make allowances,” she declared imperiously.

  * * *

  For the first time in five hundred years, Buck Rogers opened his eyes and tried to focus them on the ring of faces surrounding him. They peered down, eyes shining with curiosity.

  “Where am I?” Buck said.

  One of the faces—that of the dark, dominating person who had just left the chamber of the Princess Ardala—swam into clearer focus. “We will ask the questions,” Kane lipped thinly. “Now, spaceman, who are you?”

  “Rogers, William,” Buck stammered automatically. “Captain, United States Air Force. And—who are you?”

  Kane exchanged significant looks with the other faces surrounding Buck.

  Another voice cut through the conversation—a smooth, sensual woman’s voice coming from the entryway of the medical examining room. “What did that man say?”

  The faces turned away from Rogers, and toward the newcomer. It was the Princess Ardala, but no longer was she gowned in the lounging robes of her sumptuous boudoir. She had exchanged them for the resplendent finery of the Imperial Princess and Heir Apparent of the Draconian Interstellar Empire.

  Even in his weakened and semi-incoherent condition, Buck Rogers managed to halfway raise his head and see who had spoken in the lovely and sensual, yet imperious tones.

  Kane said to Ardala, “Something about a United States. Never heard of it.” He turned commandingly upon Buck. “Captain, what is your destination?”

  Reaction to his first movement in half a millennium overcame Buck. He clutched at his head, collapsed back onto the table. “Oh, my God!” he gasped.

  The princess looked on in alarm. “What is it?”

  “My head.” He clutched at his temples. “Anyone got an aspirin?”

  Puzzled, the princess asked, “What does that mean?”

  “Probably some sort of anti-pain drug,” Kane supplied.

  “Give him something to ease his discomfort,” Ardala commanded.

  Taking his clue from the princess, Kane
nodded toward an orderly. The latter moved off to bring a medication.

  Buck had recovered sufficiently to speak again. “What is this place? Where am I? Who are you?”

  “You’re aboard the king’s flagship Draconia.” Ardala supplied. “Under the command of the Royal Princess Ardala.”

  “Oh,” Buck said. Then it sank in. “Who?”

  “Never mind,” Kane interrupted the exchange. “We want to know all about you. Where you are from.”

  “Wait,” Buck pleaded. “Slow down. What was that about a ship?”

  “One of His Majesty’s Star Fortresses,” Ardala said. “On its way to Earth on a mission of peace.”

  “On its way to Earth?” Buck was startled. “You mean, you guys aren’t from… I mean, we aren’t on…” He tried again to rise, failed. “Oh, I’m definitely going to need that aspirin.”

  At this moment the orderly returned, a hypodermic syringe held carefully in one hand.

  “Give it to him,” Ardala commanded.

  “Hey,” Buck exclaimed. “What’s in that? Ooooh.”

  Kane spoke menacingly. “Captain, bearing in mind that you are a captive of a dynasty that has conquered three fourths of the universe… you will answer very carefully, if you value your life.”

  Buck stared at Kane, dumbstruck. The drug that had been administered was beginning to take effect: his eyes were growing vague. “What…”

  “You claim to have been blown off course,” Kane said accusingly.

  “Hmmm?”

  “How do you explain that you were conveniently drifting in an unconscious state that would take you directly onto the princess’ announced flight path to Earth?”

  Buck turned his gaze away from the menacing Kane, toward the beautifully and splendidly garbed princess. “That you?” he asked with childlike wonder. “Are you a real live princess?”