Chapter Eleven
The alien reached toward Elaine with its long arms, coming closer ever so slowly like the worst nightmare she’d ever had, one where her feet were rooted to the floor. But they weren’t, and she bolted back into the shop just in time to see another spidery alien across the room. It turned toward her as she entered, knocking over several shelves in the process and sending moccasins and carved wooden souvenirs flying.
How had they gotten in here, anyway? She hadn't heard any doors or windows or footsteps. No point in worrying about that now, though. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. She found nothing that looked like it would make any impact on the creatures. Bug spray, perhaps? Maybe by some ridiculous chance they were vulnerable to bug spray? She grabbed it and sprayed the first one. It waved the spray away and hissed as if annoyed. So much for that gamble.
The one in the shop lunged forward with a sudden burst of speed. Elaine screamed again and stumbled backward, bumping the door frame with the device. The creatures both recoiled like snakes. The first one’s jaws moved and emitted a guttural sound that set her hairs on end. “Mookaarahhh...”
Emboldened by the sudden show of weakness, the dog valiantly ducked between the legs of the first creature and charged the second, nipping at its leg. The alien skittered backward like a crab and, aiming a long finger, froze the canine in mid-bark. It stood there looking for all the world like a stuffed toy among the souvenirs on the floor.
Elaine didn’t have time to feel sorrow for her new little friend; the disruption was all she needed. Before the creatures could react, she rushed back through the store and out the door. Indy pulled up in an old pickup just as she ran out.
“There’s nobody here,” he said, “but I –”
“Drive!” she screamed at him, running around and fumbling with the passenger side door. “Just drive!”
He gave her a quizzical look. “What?”
“Don’t talk,” she said, nearly ripping the door off its hinges as she pulled herself inside. “Drive!”
Indy shrugged and floored it. The truck roared out onto the road, twin beams of light illuminating a path through whatever darkness the full moon didn’t dispatch. Elaine struggled to catch her breath and looked out the back window, expecting to see the aliens behind them at any moment. “What’s wrong?” Indy asked.
“Two of them...” she panted. “Big... Long arms... Poor dog.”
Indy finally became alarmed. “They killed the dog?”
“Yes! No... I mean – I don’t know. He froze it.” Elaine was shaking all over, nearly hysterical. “I don’t know! I don’t know! They followed us!”
Indy slammed on the brakes and they slid to a stop next to a corrugated fence. He looked at her with concern, but more for her current mental state than for any perceived danger. “Elaine... are you sure you saw something? They must think we died in the crash.”
“I’m not imagining things!”
"Okay, okay," Indy said. "Just calm down. There are no aliens here now."
"Except that one!" Elaine pointed outside, her eyes bulged and she screamed again.
Indy looked up and nearly screamed too at the sight of the giant louse looming above them, wiggling its antennae and staring straight at them with its mindless beady eyes. Then he smiled as he realized where they were. “Nice effects,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ll bother to see it. They usually skimp on plot.”
At the revelation that they were outside a drive-in movie theater showing previews, Elaine got ahold of herself for a moment and pretended not to be embarrassed. “They weren’t small like the others,” she said. “Like soldiers. Indy, they know we’re alive, and they know we have this.” She looked at the device and saw that it was now half changed. Had that happened just in the last few minutes while they were escaping? “Oh, my God... it’s changing faster.”
That was real enough. “Come on,” Indy said, “We’ll find a phone inside.”
They paid at the ticket booth and pulled into the back row of the theater, next to a cinder block concession stand and a pay phone. No sign of the aliens yet, but now they knew it was only a matter of time, time they may not have.
“There’s the phone,” Indy said. “I’ll call the base. You stay here.”
“That’s what you said the last time.”
Indy looked into her eyes. A million things rushed into his mind that he wanted to say in that moment, but there was no time, and in the end there were only two words that would suffice. “Trust me.”
She looked back into his eyes and nodded. He wasn't going far. She was being silly.
He got out of the car, hoping that she could trust him. He thought of another woman, on another night much colder than this, to whom he’d said those same words. That had turned out all right – in the short term. Then he’d let her down and now she was long gone. But he hadn’t had a choice, had he? Why was he thinking of that now?
Elaine watched him go, then looked up at the screen. An alien armada covered the sky as, on Earth, the humans ran for cover. Though hardly a sci-fi aficionado, she was intrigued enough to keep watching, in no small part because she hoped it would take her mind off their own all-too-real predicament for a while.
“This is so cheesy.”
Elaine looked over at the next car, a convertible where a teenage boy and his date were also watching the movie, its soundtrack coming from the small speaker hung on their window.
“They don’t have rays like that!” he continued, waving a hand of exasperation.
His date raised a bemused eyebrow. “How do you know?”
“He’s right, the rays are invisible,” Elaine interrupted. “And the ships are much bigger.”
They both stared at her. Ignoring them, she reached out and put her own speaker on the window to hear. She also heard Indy saying on the phone, “Get me General McIntyre...”
On screen, an alien in a bubble helmet was trying to communicate with the Earthlings. She watched, transfixed, as the female lead, Miss Roberts, spoke to Dr. Doom right in front of it. “They’re trying to talk to us, Doctor, what’re they saying?”
“Do not be afraid, Earthling...” the alien said.
“No, that’s not what they say at all!” Elaine yelled, getting the attention of every couple nearby. “If they talked at all it would be so much easier...” On screen, the alien moved around in rigged, jerky, robotic movements. “Wrong! Totally wrong! And they sound like...” She imitated the guttural sound as well as she could. “Moo-kaa-ra... Ma-kah-ra...”
Suddenly, coming from her own mouth, the sound seemed almost familiar, but not quite –
She repeated it to herself, testing the feel of it on her tongue. “Moo-kaa-rahh.”
Next to her, the girl shifted away from her date. “I told you only weirdos park on the back row.” He nodded in agreement, started the car and moved them to a new parking spot.
On the phone, Indy concluded, “We’ll stay right here.” He hung up and moved back to the truck. As he walked he realized that every couple in every car was necking. It inspired him.
Elaine jumped as he opened the door. Next to her, the tinny speaker in the window conveyed Dr. Doom’s voice saying, “Miss Roberts, there isn’t time!”
“They know where we are,” Indy said, climbing in. “The Army, I mean. We’re going to stay here till they arrive.”
“Please, Doctor...” Miss Roberts said.
“Here?” Elaine glanced around. “Do you think it’s safe here?”
“I don’t know...” Indy looked into her eyes again, holding the gaze longer this time, and pulled her across the bench seat, closer to him. “I think it’s safer over here.”
Elaine snuggled a little closer.
On screen, Miss Roberts was almost hysterical. “My God, Doctor! Do something!”
Elaine smiled at Indy. “My God, Doctor... Do something...”
Indy obliged, kissing her. She kissed him back and they slid down in the seat. She reached up and turned off the movie sound.
Indy had to admit that, as tedious as some aspects of his adventures had gotten, this part still gave him a certain thrill. True, it had come to seem a bit empty as year after year it failed to develop into anything permanent. He had come to feel that he wanted to share something more than a few moments of passion; he wanted to share his life – and not just with anyone, but with someone special. But now he had that. Soon, very soon, as soon as this little alien incident was over. He closed his eyes and breathed deep.
A shadow crossed over the moon.
Onscreen, negotiations had failed and the armada of flying saucers hovered over the city once more. Frightened pedestrians ran for cover. The movie flickered in the stillness, unnoticed by most of the preoccupied couples; then the saucer, a black disk, floated like a shadow over them. Moving slowly, as it passed over each car it sent an X-ray beam through the roof, observing the kissing couple inside and then moving on to the next one. None of them paid it any attention.
It stopped over Elaine and Indy’s truck. Other than Indy’s unique attire, he and Elaine could have been mistaken for any other couple by an alien race unfamiliar with the variations in human appearance, but the device resting between them was unmistakable. Its tractor beam fixed itself to the truck.
Onscreen, a space ship emitted a glowing tractor beam of its own, which attached to an ocean liner and lifted it out of the water, drips falling from its hull. In front of the screen, the tires of Indy’s truck slowly left the ground, dirt falling from the treads. The speaker wire went taught, then snapped. No one noticed.
“I never knew drive-in movies were so interesting...” Elaine murmured. She kissed Indy again.
The truck rose in the air, lifted over the rear fence, then moved off in place beneath the space ship over the desert. Through the windshield, all the stars of heaven flashed past as the romantic full moon held steady, but Indy and Elaine remained oblivious, having eyes only for each other.
“Oh, Indy...” Elaine finally said. “Can you ever forgive me for running out like that?”
“I’ll think of something...” he said. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. That seemed like another time, another life. He moved in to kiss her again, then stopped. The way the wind blew through her hair was captivating, but it wasn’t right. He sat up. He looked up. He assessed the situation: "Oh, shit."
Elaine looked up at him dreamily, then came to the same realization. “Oh, my God! You said it was safe!” She looked up at the saucer above them. It was shaped differently than the one from earlier, flatter and smoother, but that was no consolation. “Where are they taking us?”
Indy looked down at the sand flying past below. “Out to the desert.”
As if in response to his words, the spaceship slowed to a stop and lowered the truck gently onto the ground. Deactivating the tractor beam, it moved a little ways away and also landed. Its lights went out. Indy watched, fascinated, but Elaine locked both the doors and hyperventilated.
“Don’t panic,” Indy said.
“That’s easy for you to say, you didn’t see those ones in the shop...”
Suddenly the locks popped back up. Elaine pushed them back down. They popped up again. She frantically rolled up the windows. They shattered, blowing the glass outward.
“Well, professor,” she said, “now can we panic?”
Indy didn’t answer. What could he say?
The door of the saucer slid open. A ramp lowered. A moment later, a bug-like creature appeared in the the light of the ramp. It was small, the size of the dog they had seen earlier, and not slimy at all.
Elaine let out a sigh of relief. “That’s not like the ones I saw.”
The creature moved into the headlights of the truck. It looked harmless, almost cute, but Indy knew better than to let down his guard. “Well, it’s coming toward us,” he said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t have the same attitude problem either.”
The anthropologist part of his brain analyzed the situation, heedless of the danger. Were these creatures all of the same race? Different castes with different roles, perhaps? The ones earlier, if Elaine hadn’t been exaggerating, may have been sent just to scare her, and it had worked. Now the aliens were obviously trying a different tactic – good cop/bad cop, maybe? He realized that analyzing the motives and logic of creatures so far removed from humanity, evolved who knew how far away or in what sort of environment, was an exercise in futility.
Hopefully some things were universal, though. An idea occurred to him and he decided to go with it before he could analyze it too closely. “I’m going to try and decoy it,” he whispered. “When I do, get behind the wheel and drive.”
“Drive where?”
“Anywhere but here.” Before Elaine could protest, Indy grabbed the device and jumped out of the truck. “Hey, you, over here!”
The thing turned its head in his direction, and it occurred to him that this probably hadn’t been the brightest of his last-minute plans. The truck wouldn’t have offered much protection if the aliens decided to vaporize him like they had the jet, but at least on a psychological level it sure beat being out here in the cold and the dark all alone and exposed. Still, there was no backing out now.
He waved the device like a dog toy, its rings glowing in the night. “You want it?! You want it?” He had only recently adjusted to the prospect of life forms from other worlds, and now here he was playing keep-away with one. Life was funny sometimes.
Other than its eyes, which followed the motion of the device, the thing didn’t move. It seemed paralyzed. He couldn’t tell if it even understood English.
“Move away from the truck or I’ll destroy it!” He raised it above his head, as if preparing to dash it to the ground, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that. Immediately, the thing sprang off the truck.
“Indy!” Elaine called out. “Look!”
On the ramp another small alien appeared, this one looking like the ones killed in the crash. For a moment it looked out at Indy and the thing, then it muttered a desperate sound. “Mukara. Mukara!”
Elaine finally recognized the sound. “’Mukarah?’ ’Mukarah’... Oh, my God...” She threw open the door to the truck and rushed toward Indy. “Indy!”
He waved her back. “Elaine, get back in the truck! I told you to drive away!”
“Indy! No! He’s telling us something...”
Indy lifted the device again. In the doorway the small alien shrank with fear, and in front of him the bug-like creature stopped.
“They’re scared of it,” Elaine explained. “Or rather, they’re scared of what we’ll do with it.”
Indy didn’t need to ask for an elaboration. He thought back to the mushroom cloud he’d seen earlier today and could guess exactly what the alien meant. He slowly put the device back down.
“Mukara,” the alien said again.
“Mukara. ’Dangerous.’ It’s Sanskrit...” She turned to the alien. “Salluh, karcroom. Sallee.”
For a moment the small alien stared at them.
“What did you say?” Indy asked, feeling a little sheepish that he couldn’t remember.
“I asked him to explain,” she said.
Without warning the alien began talking quickly, loudly. When it stopped, Indy looked at Elaine. “What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know!?”
She huffed at him. “I mean, this isn’t exactly an everyday language with me, Dr. Jones.”
“Well, sorry, but you're our only hope. Tell him we won’t hurt them.”
“I’ll try. Mallee. Chasu. Cripto.” The small alien nodded, a surprisingly human gesture.
Indy had no way of knowing whether he could actually trust this creature, but he just felt good doing so. He would rather have the aliens as allies than enemies any day if he could help it. “Tell them –” Indy hesitated, unable to believe he was about to say what he was about to say, but in a moment he knew it was right. “Tell them I’m going to give it back.”
Elaine translated.
Indy took a step toward the saucer and the reaction was immediate. The alien spoke quickly again, this time with a more panicky tone, and shrank back inside the ship. “What is it? What’s he saying?”
Elaine looked as confused as he felt. “They don’t want it.”
“What?”
The buglike thing suddenly cocked its head, alerted to a sound. Before it could move, explosions rocked the area. Indy and Elaine looked up to see the hills surrounding the space craft ringed with military vehicles. Floodlights illuminated the area as a tank opened fire, hitting the saucer before it could close its door.
“No!” Elaine cried out, but she was powerless to stop the onslaught. Indy grabbed her and pulled her underneath the truck for cover. A moment later the spidery alien was ripped apart by machine gun fire, and the sparks and fizzles within revealed it to have been a robot.
The saucer tried to take off, but the artillery was too much. A truck with nuke missiles fired at the saucer, which didn’t even try to return fire as they sent it spinning into the side of a mountain. Another missile scored a direct hit and the saucer exploded in a huge fireball above the area, sending fiery chunks of metal cascading down the mountain.
Indy and Elaine stared helplessly as the Army moved down to them. Bolander was driven down by Jeep to the pickup truck they were hiding under. Before they could say anything, he pointed and shouted, “Arrest them!”
They were quickly hauled out and handcuffed by the soldiers. “You bastards, you never gave them a chance!” Elaine yelled at him.
Bolander regarded her as if she were a mentally disabled child. “They’re hostile, Elaine. They took out two of our jets. They were a threat to the United States of America.”
“The jets attacked first,” she said. “This has all been a misunderstanding. They were telling us what to do with the power cylinder.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So now you’ve talked to them?”
“Yes!”
"They speak Latin, I suppose?"
"Close. Sanskrit. I know it sounds crazy, but –"
“And what did they say? Give it back to them?” He laughed.
“Listen to her, Bolander,” Indy said. As much as he disliked the guy, he figured he owed him a warning, as a fellow Earthling and American. “It might save your life. That wasn’t one of their fighter ships...”
General McIntyre had walked up to them just in time to hear this exchange, which concerned him. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“You destroyed an unarmed ship,” Indy explained. “That’s not like the one that took out the jets. We saw it.”
“Yes, while you were trying to get away on the Russian plane,” Bolander said impatiently. “We know about that, Dr. Jones.”
“Don’t believe us then,” Elaine said, “just look at the device.” Bolander and the General stared at the cylinder. More than half the rings were lit.
“We’re running out of time,” Indy said. “Earth is running out of time.”
“Save your breath, Jones. You’ll need it at your trial.” Bolander turned to a nearby Sergeant who had his back to them. “Take them back to base.”
The Sergeant, still looking away, saluted. “Yes sir!” He barked to two young soldiers. “You heard ’em, get these two outta here.”
As Bolander climbed into his Jeep with the General, the soldiers moved Indy and Elaine away and loaded them into the back of a troop truck. They took a seat in the rear, and as the tailgate closed and the truck moved away, Indy looked out and saw the Sergeant – or rather, Cheslav in a Sergeant’s uniform. The Russian spy gave Indy the same wave Indy had given him from the plane.
“Cheslav,” Indy said, a lump forming in his throat as he realized his cockiness had come back to bite him after all. “He’s here. As if Bolander weren't bad enough.”
“We’ve got to stop them,” Elaine said.
“The Russians, or the Americans?”
“Yes.”
Next: Chapter Twelve
How had they gotten in here, anyway? She hadn't heard any doors or windows or footsteps. No point in worrying about that now, though. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. She found nothing that looked like it would make any impact on the creatures. Bug spray, perhaps? Maybe by some ridiculous chance they were vulnerable to bug spray? She grabbed it and sprayed the first one. It waved the spray away and hissed as if annoyed. So much for that gamble.
The one in the shop lunged forward with a sudden burst of speed. Elaine screamed again and stumbled backward, bumping the door frame with the device. The creatures both recoiled like snakes. The first one’s jaws moved and emitted a guttural sound that set her hairs on end. “Mookaarahhh...”
Emboldened by the sudden show of weakness, the dog valiantly ducked between the legs of the first creature and charged the second, nipping at its leg. The alien skittered backward like a crab and, aiming a long finger, froze the canine in mid-bark. It stood there looking for all the world like a stuffed toy among the souvenirs on the floor.
Elaine didn’t have time to feel sorrow for her new little friend; the disruption was all she needed. Before the creatures could react, she rushed back through the store and out the door. Indy pulled up in an old pickup just as she ran out.
“There’s nobody here,” he said, “but I –”
“Drive!” she screamed at him, running around and fumbling with the passenger side door. “Just drive!”
He gave her a quizzical look. “What?”
“Don’t talk,” she said, nearly ripping the door off its hinges as she pulled herself inside. “Drive!”
Indy shrugged and floored it. The truck roared out onto the road, twin beams of light illuminating a path through whatever darkness the full moon didn’t dispatch. Elaine struggled to catch her breath and looked out the back window, expecting to see the aliens behind them at any moment. “What’s wrong?” Indy asked.
“Two of them...” she panted. “Big... Long arms... Poor dog.”
Indy finally became alarmed. “They killed the dog?”
“Yes! No... I mean – I don’t know. He froze it.” Elaine was shaking all over, nearly hysterical. “I don’t know! I don’t know! They followed us!”
Indy slammed on the brakes and they slid to a stop next to a corrugated fence. He looked at her with concern, but more for her current mental state than for any perceived danger. “Elaine... are you sure you saw something? They must think we died in the crash.”
“I’m not imagining things!”
"Okay, okay," Indy said. "Just calm down. There are no aliens here now."
"Except that one!" Elaine pointed outside, her eyes bulged and she screamed again.
Indy looked up and nearly screamed too at the sight of the giant louse looming above them, wiggling its antennae and staring straight at them with its mindless beady eyes. Then he smiled as he realized where they were. “Nice effects,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ll bother to see it. They usually skimp on plot.”
At the revelation that they were outside a drive-in movie theater showing previews, Elaine got ahold of herself for a moment and pretended not to be embarrassed. “They weren’t small like the others,” she said. “Like soldiers. Indy, they know we’re alive, and they know we have this.” She looked at the device and saw that it was now half changed. Had that happened just in the last few minutes while they were escaping? “Oh, my God... it’s changing faster.”
That was real enough. “Come on,” Indy said, “We’ll find a phone inside.”
They paid at the ticket booth and pulled into the back row of the theater, next to a cinder block concession stand and a pay phone. No sign of the aliens yet, but now they knew it was only a matter of time, time they may not have.
“There’s the phone,” Indy said. “I’ll call the base. You stay here.”
“That’s what you said the last time.”
Indy looked into her eyes. A million things rushed into his mind that he wanted to say in that moment, but there was no time, and in the end there were only two words that would suffice. “Trust me.”
She looked back into his eyes and nodded. He wasn't going far. She was being silly.
He got out of the car, hoping that she could trust him. He thought of another woman, on another night much colder than this, to whom he’d said those same words. That had turned out all right – in the short term. Then he’d let her down and now she was long gone. But he hadn’t had a choice, had he? Why was he thinking of that now?
Elaine watched him go, then looked up at the screen. An alien armada covered the sky as, on Earth, the humans ran for cover. Though hardly a sci-fi aficionado, she was intrigued enough to keep watching, in no small part because she hoped it would take her mind off their own all-too-real predicament for a while.
“This is so cheesy.”
Elaine looked over at the next car, a convertible where a teenage boy and his date were also watching the movie, its soundtrack coming from the small speaker hung on their window.
“They don’t have rays like that!” he continued, waving a hand of exasperation.
His date raised a bemused eyebrow. “How do you know?”
“He’s right, the rays are invisible,” Elaine interrupted. “And the ships are much bigger.”
They both stared at her. Ignoring them, she reached out and put her own speaker on the window to hear. She also heard Indy saying on the phone, “Get me General McIntyre...”
On screen, an alien in a bubble helmet was trying to communicate with the Earthlings. She watched, transfixed, as the female lead, Miss Roberts, spoke to Dr. Doom right in front of it. “They’re trying to talk to us, Doctor, what’re they saying?”
“Do not be afraid, Earthling...” the alien said.
“No, that’s not what they say at all!” Elaine yelled, getting the attention of every couple nearby. “If they talked at all it would be so much easier...” On screen, the alien moved around in rigged, jerky, robotic movements. “Wrong! Totally wrong! And they sound like...” She imitated the guttural sound as well as she could. “Moo-kaa-ra... Ma-kah-ra...”
Suddenly, coming from her own mouth, the sound seemed almost familiar, but not quite –
She repeated it to herself, testing the feel of it on her tongue. “Moo-kaa-rahh.”
Next to her, the girl shifted away from her date. “I told you only weirdos park on the back row.” He nodded in agreement, started the car and moved them to a new parking spot.
On the phone, Indy concluded, “We’ll stay right here.” He hung up and moved back to the truck. As he walked he realized that every couple in every car was necking. It inspired him.
Elaine jumped as he opened the door. Next to her, the tinny speaker in the window conveyed Dr. Doom’s voice saying, “Miss Roberts, there isn’t time!”
“They know where we are,” Indy said, climbing in. “The Army, I mean. We’re going to stay here till they arrive.”
“Please, Doctor...” Miss Roberts said.
“Here?” Elaine glanced around. “Do you think it’s safe here?”
“I don’t know...” Indy looked into her eyes again, holding the gaze longer this time, and pulled her across the bench seat, closer to him. “I think it’s safer over here.”
Elaine snuggled a little closer.
On screen, Miss Roberts was almost hysterical. “My God, Doctor! Do something!”
Elaine smiled at Indy. “My God, Doctor... Do something...”
Indy obliged, kissing her. She kissed him back and they slid down in the seat. She reached up and turned off the movie sound.
Indy had to admit that, as tedious as some aspects of his adventures had gotten, this part still gave him a certain thrill. True, it had come to seem a bit empty as year after year it failed to develop into anything permanent. He had come to feel that he wanted to share something more than a few moments of passion; he wanted to share his life – and not just with anyone, but with someone special. But now he had that. Soon, very soon, as soon as this little alien incident was over. He closed his eyes and breathed deep.
A shadow crossed over the moon.
Onscreen, negotiations had failed and the armada of flying saucers hovered over the city once more. Frightened pedestrians ran for cover. The movie flickered in the stillness, unnoticed by most of the preoccupied couples; then the saucer, a black disk, floated like a shadow over them. Moving slowly, as it passed over each car it sent an X-ray beam through the roof, observing the kissing couple inside and then moving on to the next one. None of them paid it any attention.
It stopped over Elaine and Indy’s truck. Other than Indy’s unique attire, he and Elaine could have been mistaken for any other couple by an alien race unfamiliar with the variations in human appearance, but the device resting between them was unmistakable. Its tractor beam fixed itself to the truck.
Onscreen, a space ship emitted a glowing tractor beam of its own, which attached to an ocean liner and lifted it out of the water, drips falling from its hull. In front of the screen, the tires of Indy’s truck slowly left the ground, dirt falling from the treads. The speaker wire went taught, then snapped. No one noticed.
“I never knew drive-in movies were so interesting...” Elaine murmured. She kissed Indy again.
The truck rose in the air, lifted over the rear fence, then moved off in place beneath the space ship over the desert. Through the windshield, all the stars of heaven flashed past as the romantic full moon held steady, but Indy and Elaine remained oblivious, having eyes only for each other.
“Oh, Indy...” Elaine finally said. “Can you ever forgive me for running out like that?”
“I’ll think of something...” he said. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. That seemed like another time, another life. He moved in to kiss her again, then stopped. The way the wind blew through her hair was captivating, but it wasn’t right. He sat up. He looked up. He assessed the situation: "Oh, shit."
Elaine looked up at him dreamily, then came to the same realization. “Oh, my God! You said it was safe!” She looked up at the saucer above them. It was shaped differently than the one from earlier, flatter and smoother, but that was no consolation. “Where are they taking us?”
Indy looked down at the sand flying past below. “Out to the desert.”
As if in response to his words, the spaceship slowed to a stop and lowered the truck gently onto the ground. Deactivating the tractor beam, it moved a little ways away and also landed. Its lights went out. Indy watched, fascinated, but Elaine locked both the doors and hyperventilated.
“Don’t panic,” Indy said.
“That’s easy for you to say, you didn’t see those ones in the shop...”
Suddenly the locks popped back up. Elaine pushed them back down. They popped up again. She frantically rolled up the windows. They shattered, blowing the glass outward.
“Well, professor,” she said, “now can we panic?”
Indy didn’t answer. What could he say?
The door of the saucer slid open. A ramp lowered. A moment later, a bug-like creature appeared in the the light of the ramp. It was small, the size of the dog they had seen earlier, and not slimy at all.
Elaine let out a sigh of relief. “That’s not like the ones I saw.”
The creature moved into the headlights of the truck. It looked harmless, almost cute, but Indy knew better than to let down his guard. “Well, it’s coming toward us,” he said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t have the same attitude problem either.”
The anthropologist part of his brain analyzed the situation, heedless of the danger. Were these creatures all of the same race? Different castes with different roles, perhaps? The ones earlier, if Elaine hadn’t been exaggerating, may have been sent just to scare her, and it had worked. Now the aliens were obviously trying a different tactic – good cop/bad cop, maybe? He realized that analyzing the motives and logic of creatures so far removed from humanity, evolved who knew how far away or in what sort of environment, was an exercise in futility.
Hopefully some things were universal, though. An idea occurred to him and he decided to go with it before he could analyze it too closely. “I’m going to try and decoy it,” he whispered. “When I do, get behind the wheel and drive.”
“Drive where?”
“Anywhere but here.” Before Elaine could protest, Indy grabbed the device and jumped out of the truck. “Hey, you, over here!”
The thing turned its head in his direction, and it occurred to him that this probably hadn’t been the brightest of his last-minute plans. The truck wouldn’t have offered much protection if the aliens decided to vaporize him like they had the jet, but at least on a psychological level it sure beat being out here in the cold and the dark all alone and exposed. Still, there was no backing out now.
He waved the device like a dog toy, its rings glowing in the night. “You want it?! You want it?” He had only recently adjusted to the prospect of life forms from other worlds, and now here he was playing keep-away with one. Life was funny sometimes.
Other than its eyes, which followed the motion of the device, the thing didn’t move. It seemed paralyzed. He couldn’t tell if it even understood English.
“Move away from the truck or I’ll destroy it!” He raised it above his head, as if preparing to dash it to the ground, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that. Immediately, the thing sprang off the truck.
“Indy!” Elaine called out. “Look!”
On the ramp another small alien appeared, this one looking like the ones killed in the crash. For a moment it looked out at Indy and the thing, then it muttered a desperate sound. “Mukara. Mukara!”
Elaine finally recognized the sound. “’Mukarah?’ ’Mukarah’... Oh, my God...” She threw open the door to the truck and rushed toward Indy. “Indy!”
He waved her back. “Elaine, get back in the truck! I told you to drive away!”
“Indy! No! He’s telling us something...”
Indy lifted the device again. In the doorway the small alien shrank with fear, and in front of him the bug-like creature stopped.
“They’re scared of it,” Elaine explained. “Or rather, they’re scared of what we’ll do with it.”
Indy didn’t need to ask for an elaboration. He thought back to the mushroom cloud he’d seen earlier today and could guess exactly what the alien meant. He slowly put the device back down.
“Mukara,” the alien said again.
“Mukara. ’Dangerous.’ It’s Sanskrit...” She turned to the alien. “Salluh, karcroom. Sallee.”
For a moment the small alien stared at them.
“What did you say?” Indy asked, feeling a little sheepish that he couldn’t remember.
“I asked him to explain,” she said.
Without warning the alien began talking quickly, loudly. When it stopped, Indy looked at Elaine. “What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know!?”
She huffed at him. “I mean, this isn’t exactly an everyday language with me, Dr. Jones.”
“Well, sorry, but you're our only hope. Tell him we won’t hurt them.”
“I’ll try. Mallee. Chasu. Cripto.” The small alien nodded, a surprisingly human gesture.
Indy had no way of knowing whether he could actually trust this creature, but he just felt good doing so. He would rather have the aliens as allies than enemies any day if he could help it. “Tell them –” Indy hesitated, unable to believe he was about to say what he was about to say, but in a moment he knew it was right. “Tell them I’m going to give it back.”
Elaine translated.
Indy took a step toward the saucer and the reaction was immediate. The alien spoke quickly again, this time with a more panicky tone, and shrank back inside the ship. “What is it? What’s he saying?”
Elaine looked as confused as he felt. “They don’t want it.”
“What?”
The buglike thing suddenly cocked its head, alerted to a sound. Before it could move, explosions rocked the area. Indy and Elaine looked up to see the hills surrounding the space craft ringed with military vehicles. Floodlights illuminated the area as a tank opened fire, hitting the saucer before it could close its door.
“No!” Elaine cried out, but she was powerless to stop the onslaught. Indy grabbed her and pulled her underneath the truck for cover. A moment later the spidery alien was ripped apart by machine gun fire, and the sparks and fizzles within revealed it to have been a robot.
The saucer tried to take off, but the artillery was too much. A truck with nuke missiles fired at the saucer, which didn’t even try to return fire as they sent it spinning into the side of a mountain. Another missile scored a direct hit and the saucer exploded in a huge fireball above the area, sending fiery chunks of metal cascading down the mountain.
Indy and Elaine stared helplessly as the Army moved down to them. Bolander was driven down by Jeep to the pickup truck they were hiding under. Before they could say anything, he pointed and shouted, “Arrest them!”
They were quickly hauled out and handcuffed by the soldiers. “You bastards, you never gave them a chance!” Elaine yelled at him.
Bolander regarded her as if she were a mentally disabled child. “They’re hostile, Elaine. They took out two of our jets. They were a threat to the United States of America.”
“The jets attacked first,” she said. “This has all been a misunderstanding. They were telling us what to do with the power cylinder.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So now you’ve talked to them?”
“Yes!”
"They speak Latin, I suppose?"
"Close. Sanskrit. I know it sounds crazy, but –"
“And what did they say? Give it back to them?” He laughed.
“Listen to her, Bolander,” Indy said. As much as he disliked the guy, he figured he owed him a warning, as a fellow Earthling and American. “It might save your life. That wasn’t one of their fighter ships...”
General McIntyre had walked up to them just in time to hear this exchange, which concerned him. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“You destroyed an unarmed ship,” Indy explained. “That’s not like the one that took out the jets. We saw it.”
“Yes, while you were trying to get away on the Russian plane,” Bolander said impatiently. “We know about that, Dr. Jones.”
“Don’t believe us then,” Elaine said, “just look at the device.” Bolander and the General stared at the cylinder. More than half the rings were lit.
“We’re running out of time,” Indy said. “Earth is running out of time.”
“Save your breath, Jones. You’ll need it at your trial.” Bolander turned to a nearby Sergeant who had his back to them. “Take them back to base.”
The Sergeant, still looking away, saluted. “Yes sir!” He barked to two young soldiers. “You heard ’em, get these two outta here.”
As Bolander climbed into his Jeep with the General, the soldiers moved Indy and Elaine away and loaded them into the back of a troop truck. They took a seat in the rear, and as the tailgate closed and the truck moved away, Indy looked out and saw the Sergeant – or rather, Cheslav in a Sergeant’s uniform. The Russian spy gave Indy the same wave Indy had given him from the plane.
“Cheslav,” Indy said, a lump forming in his throat as he realized his cockiness had come back to bite him after all. “He’s here. As if Bolander weren't bad enough.”
“We’ve got to stop them,” Elaine said.
“The Russians, or the Americans?”
“Yes.”
Next: Chapter Twelve
