Tracer

"So, how did you come upon the name 'Tracer'?" asked the aging professor of cryptography after he was introduced.

"Well," Jeff Boeing began, deactivating his energy field in the manner of a man kicking off his shoes and relaxing indoors, "Whenever I fly I leave behind a glowing contrail that looks like a streak or 'trace,' but the name 'Streaker' would've sounded like something it shouldn't. Besides, when I was being interviewed after stopping a bank robbery once, the reporter described the armor as a 'layer of glowing tracer patterns.' I liked that description, and since then I've been set."

"Hmmm! And here, I always thought it was because you look like a big yellow tracer bullet when you go flying by. . . . Uh, could you give me a quick run-down of all the advantages your alien 'armor' gives you?"

"Okay, not that I haven't done that before: some physical strength and agility, flying power, the ability to survive in space, and extremely good protection."

"Mmm hmm, you can survive in space, and you can fly. Can you also fly while you're in space?"

"Oh, of course!" Jeff replied. "I can twist and turn, accelerate, decelerate — do pretty much the same things I can do in the air."

A smirk flicked across the professor's mouth. "The engineering boys'll go ape when they hear that. They've been speculating that the Armor has some kind of 'reactionless drive', that it produces thrust without burning any fuel or throwing out any mass. I heard one of 'em saying that if you can accelerate in space, it's pretty much a lock-down that you do have a reactionless drive on your hands."

"Hmm," Jeff digested this, "Hadn't thought of that angle."

The professor put his hand to his chin and pondered for a brief moment. "Now, as to that list of powers you rattled off . . . I think something's missing. Are you sure you didn't skip anything?"

Jeff hesitated momentarily, not so much to recall his powers as because of the question. "I'd . . . I don't really want to talk about it."

"Is it related to the Hornbock incident?" the professor asked delicately.

A longer pause. Then, finally, Jeff winced, "Yes."

"Well," the professor tried to be as understanding as he could, "It's very important for all of us, yourself included, to know all of what you can and can't do in that Armor. If only to avoid having something like that happen aga—"

"You've gotta understand," Jeff blurted, "Hornbock was a brick."

"A what?"

"A brick; a heavy body builder that's all muscle. The man had just single-handedly mugged someone and for some reason felt up to challenging me when I intercepted him. I found out later that he was hopped up on PCP, but I didn't think of that possibility at the time. Anyway, I knew he couldn't hurt me through the Armor — it completely deflected a shotgun blast once — but the little bit of strength the energy field gave me wouldn't be enough to either faze him or hold onto him. The only thing I could do when he rushed me was give him my best punch, and hope I got lucky.

"When I hit him, I heard a loud 'pop' and thought I saw a yellow flash where my fist hit. And then . . ." he began visibly shaking, "And then, whatever it was, it knocked him ten feet back into a wall. I mean, it just slammed him into it! I could . . . there was blood, a lot of blood, and his head just looked all the wrong shape. I didn't want to hit him that hard, I swear I didn't!"

"Mr. Boeing — Jeff," the professor replied, somewhat alarmed by the man's exacerbation, "It's all right, you were —"

"No, it's not all right! I killed him! I . . . killed . . . a man. A man with a life of his own, and a lifetime of memories, and probably even people who loved him. For all I knew, he was just a decent guy who happened to get ahold of some bad drugs that night and flipped out. He didn't kill anybody, he only took some guy's wallet! And you know what? If he'd lived to see another dawn, he might have regretted everything he'd done that night and never touched PCP again.  But we'll never know now, because I snuffed that life out! He'll never draw breath again, because of me."

Jeff clenched both fists and started to double over, panting through gritted teeth. The professor could only look on and hope the episode would pass.

When Jeff finally took a deep breath and seemed to get back some semblance of composure, the professor spoke again. "As I was trying to say, it's not your fault, you couldn't have known. We only found reference to the armor's 'blast touch' power a couple of days ago."

Jeff blinked. "Found reference?"

The cryptographer nodded. "I have something to show you. Come over here."

He led the headlined super-hero across the room to a metal desk, on top of which lay three items. Jeff recognized two of the objects instantly.

"That's the stuff I picked up from the alien! Did . . . did you find out anything about the disk? That's hung in my mind more than the rod-and-rectangle for some reason."

"I'll get to the disk later. What I discovered first — with a lot of help from my colleagues in the Electronics division — was that the 'rod-and-rectangle' gizmo is both a communicator and a personal log."

"A log . . . naturally! Why else would I be talking with a cryptographer right now?"

"I'm not only a cryptograther," the professor said, "I'm also a linguist. Not to brag, but I was one of the few people on Earth uniquely positioned to decipher a truly alien language."

During the silence that followed, Jeff inspected the comlog more closely. "How does it work?"

"Push this little panel to transmit, and this one to receive. The signals are sent over some hyper-spatial form of 'radio' so they can cover interstellar distances in negligible amounts of time." The cryptographer's voice took on a more sullen tone. "It's dead now; it's not relaying a single transmission."

"It's broken then —" suggested Jeff, "Non-functional."

"Oh no, it works all right. There's just nothing — or should I say no one — out there transmitting on it's frequency."

Jeff puzzled. "How's that?"

The graying cryptologist grinned and complicated his expression with an unhappy sigh. He retrieved the third object from the desk, a yellow sheet from a legal pad covered in poor handwriting. "This," he said emphatically, "Is the last message left on the log, translated into English. The actual message was not in the alien's native language, but in a binary code made specifically easy to decipher. Here's what it says, word-for-word."

He cleared his throat for dramatic effect, and read: "'Here and now, I make my final entry into this log. If anyone should hear this message and can translate it into their language, then let it be known that I am the last of the Armored Warriors.'"

He stopped reading. "Now right here it gives a large number of ionizing-deionizing periods of a cesium crystal. They use this same scheme whenever they want to give a universal time constant. The number of vibrations it gives here is an even binary number which comes out to about twenty years.

"'Twenty years ago, a great many traitors of our own race banded together to form a vast dictatorship large enough to crush any non-military groups who didn't confide in them. The homeworld of our race, populated by about seven billion of us at the time, couldn't let such a terrible empire take over. But the empire was huge, and had ships in greater number than we could hope to manufacture. So, instead of mass-producing costly space warships, we equipped each of the billion of our own warriors with an armor box charged with energy that only living matter could use, one unusual weapon, and a hyperspatial communicator which also served as a log and an entryway into the various stargates connecting the explored star systems.

"'We left our homeworld then to defend ourselves and our way of life. At first, our attacks came unexpectedly, and several of the empire's ships were smashed. But because of the lack of sufficient stargates and our simple tactics, our surprises against them soon became few and far between.

"'They knew the location of every existing stargate, and all too often destroyed us just as we re-entered normal space. We fought bravely and our armor was nearly impenetrable; but with their great numbers our gigantic army was soon overwhelmed.

"'I have travelled through star systems that are at the outskirts of charted boundaries. Sometimes I track the empire's ships, but usually they track me, and then I have to run away through a stargate to a system I know they aren't occupying.

"'Now, I'm among the inner planets of an unknown yellow star system, with none of my comrades or our outposts around. I've tried several times to contact other Armored Warriors, but none have responded, and considering the several light-centuries of range the communicator has, I am led to the inescapable conclusion that the rest of our army has been destroyed, and that I'm the last of the Armored Warriors.

"'Even as this message is being encoded, one of the empire's ships is closing in on me. If any of my equipment is recovered, and if by the slimmest chance the race that recovers it doesn't have technology equal to ours yet has translated this message, then use my items for the good of your race, and if necessary, for the destruction of the empire that once had our aims. Farewell, my people.'"

Jeff didn't speak; his expression displayed his every concern and astonishment.

"And that," the cryptographer finished, "Is the last chapter in the life story of our alien friend."

Slowly, Jeff began to speak. "Then . . . then . . . I'm supposed to protect humanity from destruction, and destroy an alien empire at the same time."

"You're not obliged to do anything. You found the alien completely by accident; you don't have to risk your life or crush any empires or save any worlds just because of that. You've done more than enough good already, fighting crime on your own and all; but if you think someone else should serve the greater good with that box of yours, you're free to hand it on."

Jeff pondered this. Giving it all up had never occurred to him before, and some far-off part of him seriously considered it. He could just forget everything and go back to his old life, in relative leisure and safety, knowing that someone else was doing the dangerous work.

But oh, how he ached for the action he'd never seen! He was a swashbuckling super-hero, saving all of humanity and having a good time doing it. He'd always liked helping people out, and this had been his best opportunity to do just that.

"Doc," he said, "I don't think I want to give any of this up. I'll keep the box and use it for what it was intended for."

The cryptographer smiled. "That's what I hoped you'd say."

"I was wondering," Jeff said matter-of-factly, "How'd you figure out the 'blast touch' power of the box without seeing it or studying it?"

"Well, I really didn't figure them out. You see, there were two parts to the log: the entry-and-update section, which contained the message I read you; and a rather extensive data table that probably gave the alien all he needed to know to start service as an armored warrior. Upon entry of a special command, the log plays how-to instructions for the box, followed by some vague rules of diplomacy and dozens of various combat tactics, including the use of some ranged weapon. In fact," he pointed to the disk, "This is supposed to be an energy gun."

"Supposed to be one?" Jeff was thoroughly confused.

"That's right. There's some mention of it in the main part of the log, but the instructional section doesn't even recognize its existence. What I gather is that it was invented and given to our alien friend after the war was underway, and the homeworlders had a rule about not telling anybody how it worked for fear that the Empire might figure it out. I don't think he'll have to worry about that now."

"Yeah. The empire won't even bother with him now that he's dead. They mortally wounded the guy when he was orbiting Earth, and the fall finished him off. I don't think the human race'll have any trouble from the empire for a good long time."

Jeff couldn't have been more wrong. . . .

Send comments regarding this Web page to: Roger M. Wilcox.

Roger M. Wilcox's main stories page

Roger M. Wilcox's Homepage