Altered Children

Tom Wallace woke up ten minutes before Shuttle SB3 entered the landing bay on the Rostvar Cluster. He tried to move, but soon realized he was strapped in a seat. Tom opened his eyes slightly and glanced around as best he could. He saw a boy to his left and a girl in front of the boy; both securely strapped into bucket seats. Tom also saw two of the three crewmen sitting in front. What the heck! This is like my dreams, but it sure doesn’t seem like a dream now, he thought, his heart racing.

Breathing deeply and slowly to regain his composure, he observed his surroundings. Wow, Dione is here too! Over the last year, starting before his seventh birthday, Tom’s telepathic and clairvoyant abilities had grown significantly stronger.

Five months ago—in February—he’d first made telepathic contact with seven-year-old Dione Anderson, an African-American girl with braces on her teeth from Greensboro, North Carolina. She and Tom were part of a group of nine children who had conversed telepathically numerous times since then. He could sense she was waking up too, but the boy he could see and another child he could not see were still unconscious.

Tom tried to talk telepathically with Dione. “Dione, it’s Tom. If you open your eyes, just squint and move your head very slowly when you look around.”

“Tom, where are we?” She opened her eyes and glanced in front and behind her.

“Remember all our conversations and dreams about aliens and space ships?” he asked.

“Yes. I . . . oh my God! We’re on a space ship, aren’t we?”

“We must be. Those . . . people up front sure aren’t Human!”

Dione saw one of the crew walking back to the cockpit. “No, they’re not. Look at their red skin . . . and their foreheads.”

“They’re so tall too,” Tom added.

At that moment the second girl began to awaken. Dione got her attention and explained the situation as Tom had with her. Luci Ischer, from Athens, Georgia, was on the tall side with blue eyes, blonde hair and a cleft chin.

“I don’t think any of these aliens can mind-talk,” Luci opined.

“Yeah, we’re lucky about that,” Dione stated.

“Some of us kids have been able to get into the minds of people who don’t have our abilities,” Tom said. “I’ve been able to listen to what they are thinking and to make them do things—you know, nothing bad, sometimes just for fun. Since I woke up, I’ve been trying to listen to these people and—guess what—they can think in English.”

“They have a different language, but they know English too,” Luci observed.

“Let’s stay quiet for a while and see what’s happening,” Tom suggested, and then quickly added, “and practice getting in and out of their minds without them knowing it.”

For the next five minutes, the three children who were awake practiced reading the crew’s minds and acquainted themselves with the vessel’s layout.

The medical team was waiting when Shuttle SB3 entered its designated landing bay on deck four and moved to its assigned berth in Shuttle Squadron B’s section. The vessel’s crew and the medical team unloaded the children and placed them on gurneys.

The shuttle’s crew remained on board, ran a diagnostic check on all systems, placed the vessel in standby mode, and took a break. They knew it would be an hour and a half before they would have to return the children to their respective pickup points.

Before the medical team left the hangar bay with their charges, they notified the bridge they were ready. The officer of the deck announced over the carrier’s general intercom that all personnel not involved directly in the support of the Jerithan Study Group’s operations should vacate the specified passageways and lifts between the hangar decks and the holds being used as testing rooms.

The medical team guided the gurneys to the lift, which they took to deck three. They exited and shepherded the gurneys through the passageways toward Testing Room Two. The three children looked furtively about and saw more of the same strange people from their dreams, as they passed pale blue bulkheads and hatches. Tom saw Admiral teDanon striding from the direction in which they were headed.

“Hey,” Tom said to Dione and Luci, “someone’s heading this way who looks like he must be important because everyone in the hall is getting out of his way and standing at attention.”

He focused his mind on the person and picked up a number of interesting thoughts.

“That guy who just went by us, any of you see into his mind?” Luci asked.

“Yeah, I did,” Dione answered. “I’m getting a better understanding of their language. He seems very confused about something.”

“I know,” Tom agreed. “I think he’s in charge, but . . . I sense a feeling from him . . . not confusion . . . more like—”

Luci jumped in with, “Guilt, that’s what it is. He’s not comfortable with what they’re doing to us.”

“I got something too,” Dione stated. “He’s thinking of someone crashing on Earth—his father I think. It seems his father didn’t die right away.”

“These things could be important,” Tom added. “Don’t anyone forget it.”

“Let’s keep reading their minds and see what we can learn,” Luci advised.

“Okay,” Dione said, “especially how we can get out of here before something bad happens.”

As the gurneys were brought into Testing Room Two, Tom and Dione sensed the other boy slowly awakening.

“What’s happening?” the boy wanted to know. He opened his eyes and looked around.

“Shut up!” Tom said telepathically, trying to get the boy’s attention.

The boy tried to sit up, but his seat straps held him down. “Where am I?” he croaked. All the gurneys stopped while the two nearest Silkaran medtechs held the boy down on the gurney. “Stop, don’t,” the child protested as a third medtech injected the boy with a small amount of liquid and the boy soon relaxed on the gurney, unconscious once more.

With great difficulty Tom, Dione and Luci remained quiet and unmoving. They made a greater effort to contact the other boy, but failed.

While the three children assessed their situation, the four gurneys stopped near the testing stations and isolation chambers allocated to each of them. They continued speaking telepathically, and remained calm by using meditation techniques taught to them by their psychotherapists and frequent encouragement of one another.

The testing staff started to run preliminary tests and check the children’s vital signs.

“We have to try to stop them from doing anything to us,” Dione said.

“But make them think it’s their own idea,” Tom added.

“Or maybe that they were ordered to stop by someone in charge,” Luci suggested, to which everybody agreed.

Dione, Tom and Luci successfully stopped the testing staff from injecting them and from putting them into their isolation chambers. The other boy was unable to help himself, but Dione managed to keep him out of the isolation chamber.

As the medtech was about to inject him, Tom gained control of her mind. He instructed her to have the person in charge come to see her regarding a problem she had encountered. Dione and Luci had gotten their medtechs to take their temperature and blood pressure, and do nothing else. Then, Tom followed suit. The three were so busy; they did not notice the numerous children throughout the compartment in their own individual isolation chambers.

Commander geWaxted hurried over from across the compartment to check on the problem Tom’s medtech was having. When the stout, short—for a Silkaran—head of the medical team got there, Tom had Dione take over his medtech’s mind while he put the medical officer into a trance-like state and explored the officer’s memory. Tom could not understand everything, but he got a sense of what was going on. He knew what he wanted to say and got it translated into the Silkaran language from the mind of one of the technicians, something at which all the children were rapidly becoming proficient.

“Commander,” Tom instructed him in the Silkaran language, “Get files that explain this mission. Bring the files here.” Dione was listening in and joined Tom in repeating the instructions until they were satisfied the officer would follow their directions.

The three children kept their technicians busy doing various tasks until the commander returned holding a computer memory card containing the files. Again, Tom turned over control of his medtech to Dione and entered Commander geWaxted’s mind. Using a combination of words and images, Tom convinced the commander to give the memory card to Tom’s medtech, and order the medtechs to take the four children back to the shuttle.

Tom instructed the commander to tell the shuttle crew to return them to their homes on Earth and then go to his room and fall asleep. He repeated these instructions several times. Commander geWaxted handed over the memory card, gave the orders, and left the testing room. When he arrived at his stateroom, the commander stretched out on his bunk and was fast asleep in seconds.

Under Tom’s influence, the medtech gave him the memory card, and he stuffed it in the pocket of his pajama top. The medical team that had brought the children to the testing room moved them out and back along the passageway to the lift and down to deck four.

Luci identified the senior member of the team. Tom probed his mind for information that would help get them off the carrier. He learned that Sub-Admiral teDanon—the officer they had seen in the passageway earlier—was in charge. Tom directed the senior medtech to contact the officer who commanded the craft that brought them from Earth and told him what to tell the officer.

The senior medtech used the communicator on his lapel to establish a link to the SB3’s commanding officer. “Lieutenant, please report to Shuttle SB3 with your crew. I will be there shortly and give you secret, sealed orders from Admiral teDanon concerning your earlier cargo.”

“Why am I getting this from you and not one of my own senior officers?” the Lieutenant asked.

Tom was still in the mind of the senior medtech, and had established a constant flow of translation into English of whatever the man heard and said. This enabled Tom to guide the technician in the conversation. “I do not know, Lieutenant,” replied the technician. “However, I am sure the orders I have for you will explain everything.”

Tom used clairvoyance to ensure the memory card remained undisturbed in his pocket.

When they arrived back at the SB3, the crew was already there. Because Tom, Dione and Luci had taken control of the shuttle crew on the flight from Earth, doing so again was easy. The children directed the medical team to return to their duty stations and instructed the crew to get Luci and the unconscious boy into the shuttle and strapped in their seats. Upon questioning, the SB3’s pilot—the lieutenant who was also its commanding officer—told Tom, “No shuttle can depart without authorization from Shuttle Command.”

“How do you know all those questions to ask and what to tell them, Tom?” Luci inquired.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Dione added.

“It’s lucky my dad’s an officer in the navy; I picked up a lot from him,” Tom answered. “I also watch old war movies and play war video games. This is just like them—only scarier.”

Thanks to Tom’s deft handling, the shuttle’s CO was certain he had seen the non-existent sealed orders. Tom learned a trackertech, a sensortech and a sub-commander in charge would be on duty in the command center for the next half hour and then three others would relieve them. At Tom’s direction, the lieutenant ordered his crew to make the shuttle ready for departure. While Tom continued to impress his will on the lieutenant’s mind, Dione and Luci reinforced the fiction of the secret orders on the minds of the SB3’s other two crewmen.

As the children had planned, Luci remained aboard. The vessel’s CO took Tom and Dione’s hands and they made their way to the shuttle command center. Everyone they passed stared at them, but no one attempted to stop them. Tom made good use of his burgeoning skills, and used the lieutenant’s mind to translate what he wanted to say from English to Silkaran.

When they arrived at the command center, the lieutenant in charge demanded to know why they had not used the automated flight authorization system. Tom entered his mind, convinced him their presence was approved and that he had verified their early departure with Shuttle Group Commander kaAshlo. Meanwhile, Dione kept the trackertech and sensortech busy with their duties. The three then returned to the SB3 with the authorization they needed.

The pilot and co-pilot took their places, strapped in and ran through the preflight check with the engineer. Dione and Tom strapped themselves into their seats and told Luci what they had done. Two minutes later the SB3 lifted off and moved into the nearest launch bay. After receiving the signal for departure, the interior hatches shut, the outer hatches opened and the shuttle vaulted into space. A little over a half-hour had gone by since they made their escape from Testing Room Two.

As the spacecraft made its way to its usual jump point, five hundred thousand miles away, the boy who had been unconscious began to wake up. “What’s . . . going . . . on?” Still somewhat groggy, he looked to the side and saw Luci. “Where are we?”

Luci managed to find out the boy’s name was Donald Locke and he was from Roanoke, Virginia. He had green eyes, red hair, large ears and freckles on his cheeks. She tried to explain the situation. His paranormal abilities had never developed very strongly, however, and neither he nor his parents had ever contacted anybody in the group that was forming under Dennis Murphy’s leadership.

Donald kept interrupting Luci. “I don’t know what to do. What’s going to happen to us?” Before she could answer, Donald noticed the shuttlecraft’s crew. “What are they? I want my mom and dad. I want to go home.” He started to cry and unstrap himself.

“Calm down Donald,” Luci implored him. “Stay still!” She tried to get him back in his seat. “Tom, Dione, help me. I can’t get him to be quiet and understand a single thing.”

“We don’t have time for this!” Tom barked. “We need to concentrate.”

Dione and Luci used the telepathic hypnosis technique they had used on the Silkarans and were able to calm Donald down and put him into a deep sleep.

“He’s not going to be any help at all,” Dione thought to Tom and Luci.

During the fifteen minutes of the flight to their first hyper-jump, Tom, Dione and Luci made very good use of their time. At Tom’s direction, the flight engineer slid Commander geWaxted’s memory card into the computer’s card slot. Next, the flight engineer opened and read, in English, from the first of the files which he displayed on the computer screen.

The children learned as much as they could about the League of Worlds, the quarantine resolution and the super-secret Operation Pacify. They tried to communicate telepathically with friends on Earth, but were unsuccessful.

Shuttle Group Commander kaAshlo returned to the shuttle command center from her discussion with the maintenance chief. The senior officer, a lieutenant, greeter her. She saw one sensortech petty officer monitoring the three sensor screens and a trackertech checking monitors for the system that tracked the phased biotronic locators buried in the brains of the children being taken to their homes after their earlier examinations.

The commander sat down at the command console and displayed the activity log on the monitor. As she skimmed the activity of the previous half-hour, her eyes opened wide and she swiveled abruptly to face the lieutenant.

“Lieutenant, who authorized the unscheduled departure of the SB3 ten minutes ago?”

“Ma’am, you did.”

“No, I did not! There is no authorization with my identification noted on the activity log. Please explain.”

The lieutenant rose from his chair and moved to stand next to Commander kaAshlo. “The lieutenant commanding the SB3 stopped in here before departing and said you had authorized a special ops flight,” he told her. “I followed procedure and verified that with you on the COM circuit. You said you would enter the authorization on the log remotely.”

“Well, something is wrong here,” the commander declared. “You and I did not discuss any special ops flight, and I definitely did not authorize one.” She pointed to the screen and tapped it with a finger. “See here, no authorization.”

“Ma’am,” the trackertech interjected. “Four of the test children are aboard the SB3.”

The commander pressed a button on the communications panel. “Commander geWaxted, please respond, this is Shuttle Group Commander kaAshlo on a code orange emergency.”

A moment afterward Commander geWaxted sat up in his bunk and glanced at the clock. What the ‘brach’ am I doing here? he thought. The recurring emergency COM-call reverberated in his head as he got off his bunk and and stepped over to his communicator. “Yes, what is the emergency?”

“Melker, did you release four test children before their scheduled departure?”

“Why . . . yes, a half hour ago. Wait a moment, please.” Commander geWaxted brought up the activity log for Testing Room Two on his monitor and quickly reviewed it. When he spoke, his usually high-pitched voice was almost squeaking. “This is highly unusual, Demme. I see no explanation or authorization from Admiral teDanon. But I am sure there was a reason for releasing them. I am just not sure what it was.”

Commander kaAshlo slammed her fist on the console and her skin took on a slight orange tint. “Prax’s fist! Commander, lock down your area immediately.” She cut off communications. She pressed another button on the communicator panel. “Admiral teDanon, this is Shuttle Group Commander kaAshlo with a code orange emergency.”

Commander geWaxted contacted Testing Room Two and told the petty officer who answered to lock it down under tight security, and then followed suit with Testing Room One. Crewmen quickly got out of his way as he headed toward Testing Room Two, shaking his head and repeatedly slapping his thigh.

Admiral teDanon was in the middle of a meeting with the supply officer when he heard the message on the speakers. “Please excuse me,” he told the officer and then pressed a button on his personal communicator. “Admiral teDanon. What is the emergency?” After Commander kaAshlo explained the situation, the admiral’s throat constricted and in a voice more scratchy than usual told her, “Contact them and instruct the pilot to return immediately.” He then notified the Rostvar Cluster’s captain, who sounded the claxon to call the crew to their stations for Alert Status Two.

Admiral teDanon immediately called the carrier’s pursuit group commander. “Shuttle SB3 departed a little over a half-hour ago, without authorization, and is carrying four of our test children. How soon can you scramble a pursuit flight to go after it?”

“Sir, a flight of four is always on standby. It can launch in six minutes.”

“Good, send them out. Tell the flight leader to contact the SB3 and instruct the pilot to return forthwith. If the vessel does not execute a turn, have your pursuit flight attempt to stop it with their grappling fields—before it gets within range of Jerithan sensors.”

The pursuit group commander sounded the scramble buzzer in Flight Crew Ready Room Two and announced, “Scramble Pursuit Flight A.” Next, he checked the sensor data.

“Sir,” the pursuit group commander said to Admiral teDanon, “the SB3 has a big head start and should be near their first hyper-jump point. What if the pursuit flight cannot get close enough to use the grappling fields before they are within Jerithan sensor range?” The commander waited for nearly a minute without a reply before prompting, “Sir?”

Admiral teDanon rubbed his forehead ridge. Great gods of Roshna! How the ‘brach’ did this happen, he thought. “Commander, if that happens, order them to fire on the shuttle to disable it. If it cannot be stopped, destroy it. I am on my way to Combat Command. I will see you there momentarily.” He ended communications without waiting for a response and directed the supply officer to go to his alert station.

The admiral informed the Rostvar Cluster’s captain and spacecraft operations commander, a sub-captain, of his actions. Then he headed for the combat command center.

Tom, Luci and Dione were listening to the flight engineer read the most pertinent files in English, until their concentration was interrupted by a call from the carrier.

“Shuttle SB3, this is Shuttle Command. SB3 . . . respond!”

Dione and Luci maintained control of the co-pilot and flight engineer while Tom directed the behavior of the shuttle’s pilot.

“Shuttle SB3,” the lieutenant said. “Over.”

“This is Shuttle Group Commander kaAshlo. You departed without authorization. Return to the carrier immediately.”

“I am sorry, ma’am, I am under secret orders from Admiral teDanon. I cannot return.”

The shuttle group commander tried to hold her temper. “Lieutenant, I do not know what orders you think you have, but there are no secret orders. Return, now!”

Tom instructed the pilot to reply one last time. “Shuttle Command, my orders are clear. We are approaching our hyper-jump point. From here on we will be running silent.”

“Shuttle SB3, this is Pursuit A Leader. Pursuit Flight A is behind you with orders to stop you. Shuttle SB3, Pursuit A Leader, . . . this is your last—”

Pursuit A Leader, a newly promoted sub-commander, stared at the brown “dead connection” light. “Prax’s fist. That fool cut me off.”

The co-pilot reported that the sensors showed a flight of four pursuit craft slowly closing the gap behind them, but still far out of range. The crew diverted power from various non-critical systems to the fusion-powered plasma engine and increased speed.

They arrived at their hyper-jump point two minutes later. The flight engineer set and locked in the coordinates for the hyper-jump, realigning the SB3s path. The pilot initiated the short jump. The shuttle entered normal space-time at a point midway between the spacecraft carrier and Earth. The crew was used to entering and exiting from hyperspace, but the children were not, and felt a brief moment of dizziness and nausea.

The flight engineer set and locked in new coordinates, and the pilot initiated another short hyper-jump. After exiting hyperspace five million miles from Earth, the pilot continued to build up speed, heading for Earth.

Jason woke with a start. “What the heck.”

Peter was slightly slower to awaken. “What? Jeez, what a dream.”

“It’s no dream guys, it’s Tom Wallace. Dione Anderson and Luci Ischer are here too.”

“And so is Donald Locke,” added Dione.

“Where is ‘here’?” Jason asked.

“Who’s Donald?” Peter queried, wiping sleep from his eyes.

“We’re on a space ship and—” Tom began his reply.

Jason interrupted Tom. “A space ship!”

“Were you kidnapped?” Peter inquired at the same time.

Now Jason and Peter were fully awake. Yuriko too had been roused by the emotional strength of Tom’s telepathic touch. She came into the brothers’ room and listened intently. She grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil from Jason’s desk and began to make notes.

“Please don’t interrupt—we don’t have time for questions—they’re chasing us. Just turn on your computers and listen.” Tom begged them.

By now, the shuttle’s crew so strongly believed their false orders to be genuine, intense mind control was unnecessary. Luci and Dione contacted two different altered children with whom they had been communicating telepathically for over a year and gave them the same instructions Tom gave to Jason and Peter.

“Use your voice recognition software and repeat everything we tell you into your word processor,” Tom implored Jason and Peter. “Dione and Luci will mind-talk with others and I’ll mind-talk to you two. We’re going to give you all the same information so nothing gets missed or misunderstood. Starting now.”

In these few minutes the shuttle had reached its cruising speed of one percent light-speed. The pilot began to time occasional bursts of speed to the vessel’s maximum safe speed of one point two percent light-speed, or almost 2,250 miles per second.

Once again, Tom had the flight engineer start reading the files without speaking, translating them into English for himself and Dione. Luci had the co-pilot do the same for her own use. The three children repeated everything to those on Earth with whom they were communicating.

They started with basic material about the League of Worlds and its members, then the quarantine resolution that had failed to gain approval and the study group resolution that had been adopted by the executive council eight years previously. They were now twelve minutes into the last leg of their return to Earth. Finally, they read an overview of Operation Pacify.

The next four minutes went by too quickly for the children. The pursuit flight had made its second hyper-jump and was hitting their top speed in an attempt to catch up with the shuttle. They were now within a million miles of their target.

“Jason, we’re three million miles from Earth,” Tom said. “The guys who’re chasing us are getting a lot closer now. I don’t know if we’re going to make it back. If we don’t, tell all our parents what happened.”

Tom kept tabs on how close their pursuers were getting and passed on to Jason whatever basic information he could dig out of the lieutenant’s mind on the hyper-drive and fusion-powered plasma engines. He also advised Jason of what they had obtained from Admiral teDanon’s mind. The others focused on the highlights of the progress report summaries for Operation Pacify, desperately trying to get as much of the most important data out before it was too late.

Early in their periods of self-discovery, the children had learned they could form in their minds an entire phrase or paragraph, and sometimes whole ideas and thoughts, without using individual words, and then telepathically communicate the information to one another substantially faster than by normal speech. Some of what they were now trying to pass on, however, was technical and complex, making it difficult to convey in any manner other than word for word. If not for their photographic memories, this task might have been impossible.

“Damn it, Tom!” Peter said at one point. “Go slower, please. I can’t enter it into the computer so fast.”

“Sorry, Pete,” Tom replied. “Too much to give you and not much time left.”

Three more times one or two of the recipients had to tell Tom, Dione or Luci to slow down and use real words instead of the visualizations and imagery.

It had been twenty minutes since their last hyper-jump. They were ten minutes from home at the shuttle’s normal cruising speed.

Tom focused his mind on the lieutenant commanding the SB3. “Do whatever you have to do to get away.” Then, in English, he queried the pilot, “How far are they from us now?”

“Two hundred thousand miles and gaining,” he answered, also in English.

“How close are we to Earth?” Tom asked.

“Nearly one million miles,” the pilot replied.

“Can we get away from them?” Tom wanted to know.

“We may make it, but the odds are not with us,” the lieutenant speculated calmly.

Tom passed this last conversation to the twins.

“What’ll they do if they catch you?” Jason inquired.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’ll be good.” Tom told the pilot to keep giving him a running commentary about the pursuit as Tom continued to update Jason. In the meantime, Dione and Luci persevered in passing information to the children on Earth.

“They have closed to fifty thousand miles now,” the lieutenant said. “We are over two hundred thousand miles from Earth. We must begin to decelerate now or we will crash.”

“But won’t they catch us then?” Tom asked.

“Probably, but they will have to decelerate too,” the lieutenant responded.

“Not enough time,” Luci complained. “We need more time.”

A minute later, their small craft shuddered when shrapnel and energy waves from a nearby explosion struck its shields. The children were shaken by the experience and their fear made it extremely difficult to maintain continued mental contact with Earth. The SB3’s flight engineer diverted additional power to the shields at the pilot’s order as the shuttle decelerated. Fifteen seconds afterward, another nearby explosion rocked them.

“Jase, they’re firing at us,” Tom’s fear was palpable and strongly conveyed to Jason along with the message.

“What can we do to help?” Peter inquired.

“They are trying to disable us,” the lieutenant told Tom, “but are too far away for the accuracy required. As close as we are now to Earth, their only option is to destroy the shuttle.”

Tom passed this to the twins and added, “Just tell all our families what happened, and that we love them.”

At eight thousand miles from the SB3, when it was still one hundred ten thousand miles from Earth, the pursuit craft were within range and able to use missiles and plaser cannons—high energy plasma-enhanced laser weapons. After one more failed attempt to contact the shuttle, the lead pursuit craft’s pilot and his number one wingman fired their weapons. Each missile first discharged a strong electromagnetic pulse to overcome defensive systems.

“Guys, remember what I told—shit, power’s gone—told you before about the officer in charge and his feelings about this whole thing . . . and about his father. Maybe you—”

“What?” Jason replied telepathically before he shouted, “Maybe i what?”

“Noooo!” Yuriko cried out.

“God damn it!” Peter screamed.

Scores of amateur and professional astronomers noted in their logs observating a bright light in the sky which disappeared within a few seconds. Some thought it had been a nova or supernova, and others surmised it must have been a meteorite hitting the atmosphere from directly overhead. During the next six hours all those explanations had been ruled out.

The view from Earth’s space station was blocked by the planet and the moon base was facing away from where the action had taken place; so none of their inhabitants saw anything.