The Last Starfighter by Alan Dean Foster

“Ah, your surprise, your great honor. Listen, Centauri wants to keep it a surprise a little longer. Allow me that little pleasure. Trust me. You’re gonna love it. Love it! And who wouldn’t? It’s the greatest honor ever devolved on mankind and it’s yours, all yours. Isn’t that something?”

“Will I live to enjoy it?” he whispered, aware that he was digging into the seat with all ten fingers.

“Wouldn’t be much of an honor if you didn’t, would it? Honestly, I find this preoccupation with death on your part most unhealthy in a Starfighter, my boy. I fail to comprehend your attitude. You’re much too young to be thinking about dying.”

“I agree,” said Alex readily, “so why don’t you slow down a little, okay? Please?”

Centauri shook his head, concentrating on his driving. “Can’t do that. Not now. Wouldn’t do.” The car continued to accelerate. Now the mountain landscape outside was little more than a blur, dark shapes blending into one another, individual details incomprehensible with speed, the world outside green and brown streaks on black, as swirled together as the colors in a Georgia O’Keeffe painting.

“The amusing part of this is that it’s all a mistake.” Centauri spoke casually, with apparent disregard for such possibilities as rocks in the road or washouts. ” ‘Cause that particular Starfighter game was supposed to be delivered to Las Vegas, not a fleaspeck trailer park in the middle of tumbleweeds and tarantulas.

“So it must be destiny, fate. Luck even, that brought us together. And as the poets say, the rest is history!”

Alex found time to wonder at the old man’s words despite the terror engulfing him. “That particular game? What’s special about that particular game?”

“Relays. Grid perception. Depth simulacra. Had to have some primitive, ordinary-type arcade Starfighter games made and spread around or some repair and distribution people might’ve gotten curious. Not your usual integrated circuitry inside that box, oh no!” He chuckled. “Almost would’ve been worth it to see the expression on some repairman’s mug if he’d gotten inside that game, or one of its relatives. He’d think it was some kind o’ elaborate gag. No gag, though. Oh no, no gag.” He glanced back at his petrified passenger. “Integral patterned inertia harness secured?”

“Huh?”

“Seat belt on?”

“Oh.” Alex examined the peculiarly padded straps that emerged from either side of the high-backed seat, pulled them across his chest and fought for a moment with the strange fastening system. The harness seemed to caress him, adjusting itself to the contours of his body like a cluster of flat tentacles. Initially a disquieting sensation, but the touch was so light it grew soothing. Besides which he was much too scared to pay close attention to anything the straps might be doing. He could barely bring himself to keep his eyes open.

They passed a tall white tower that blew apart from the force of their passing. Fragments covered the road in their wake. A stop sign, or something advertising a store or gas station farther up the road. Now it was splinters. Nor was it the first unfortunate object to feel the effects of the car’s passing. Their track was strewn with uprooted bushes, weeds, small trees and one badly addled raccoon, left staggering in the darkness.

The highway patrolman ought to have been listening to official calls. Instead, he lay back in his seat, the police band on very low, the portable on the seat nearby very loud and alive with AC/DC belting out “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.” Not a lullaby, but still it was all the officer could do to stay awake, despite the Australians’ urgent remonstrations.

He was alone in the squad car, no one to talk to and certainly nothing in the way of traffic on the mountain road to keep him awake. Something went beep and he let his eyes slide idly to the radar gun mounted on the dash.

Then something like a horizontal tornado exploded past in a wash of white metal. The squad car rocked in the afterblast, dumping the radio on the floor and reducing the FM wail to a muffled squeal. The squad car slewed around on its rear tires and ratcheted to a halt on the gravel lining the shoulder.

As programmed, the radar gun had locked in on the passing traveler at the moment of passage. Now wide awake, the patrolman gaped at the gun, not comprehending.

The digital readout read three hundred miles per hour.

He rubbed his eyes. The figure remained. Down on the floor Freddie Mercury was burbling Killer Queen into the carpet. On the police radio the dispatcher was chatting about some minor disturbance in the Gold Rush Bar. And the readout wouldn’t go away.

The gun was miscalibrated. Had to be. But there was no question in his mind about one thing. Whatever had passed him was not, definitely not, traveling within the legal speed limit.

Siren howling, he took off after whatever it was. As he accelerated up the road he retained enough presence of mind not to call his report back into the station.

First he’d see if he could see something.

4

Alex flinched when they entered the tunnel. It was a long tunnel, one of the longest in the state, and the thunder of the car in the tubular confine shook the supporting concrete until flakes fell from the ceiling.

Centauri was stubbing out his cigarette in something that looked like an ashtray that wasn’t. It couldn’t be, because when he removed his hand the cigarette had vanished, paper and filter and all, together with all traces of lingering smoke.

“Where are we going? Where are you taking me?” He no longer inquired about the nature of his “prize,” beginning to suspect it was only part of some larger lie.

He was wrong, and yet he was right.

Centauri turned to face him, still smiling, ignoring the narrow tunnel racing past and the road beneath as if they no longer mattered, as though the car could drive itself just as effectively without his help.

“Told you, boy. I want to keep it a surprise.”

“I don’t think I can handle any more surprises. I want to know …” He broke off, gesticulating wildly at the road.

There was a barrier just beyond the end of the tunnel. He remembered something that had been in the local paper, something about repairs being made to the bad curve on this section of highway. About a detour around the tunnel itself. It explained why they hadn’t encountered any traffic.

He couldn’t read the words on the rapidly approaching barrier but he knew what they said.

ROAD CLOSED AHEAD

“Calm down,” Centauri admonished him, his attention still on his passenger instead of the road. “Are you the kinda kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Or pesters a magician to tell you his tricks? Or sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents before everyone else gets up? Of course you ain’t! Which is why I’m not going to tell you what your surprise is. Besides which I love surprises. Don’t you?”

At the last instant Alex found his voice just in time to croak, “Look out!”

Centauri turned indifferently, noted the barrier racing up at them. “Oh, that.”

He touched two buttons on the dash. They lit up when he touched them, which Alex found interesting. He’d never seen controls on a car light up like that. Of course, this was a foreign model and he didn’t know much about foreign models, but it still seemed strange and . . .

A glass partition snapped down between him and Centauri. The car shuddered. Short, stubby fins emerged from the rear of the vehicle. Other sections of car were in motion, retracting to reveal peculiar nodules and protuberances or to permit the movement of other external objects.

What would have interested him the most he couldn’t see. The rear end of the car adjusted itself to reveal, not an open trunk, but something considerably more sophisticated and solid.

The back of the car glowed with cold energy. As it exited the tunnel the car left the roadbed, soared over the wooden barrier and torn-up pavement beyond and vaulted high over the edge of the sheer cliff which dropped away beneath the curve in the road. It did not fall but continued to climb toward the moon.

Suddenly the cool glow at the rear of the car faded. Sputtering noises filled the cockpit. Lights dimmed and winked. They reminded Alex of the neon sign on the front of the trailer park general store.

Glowering at the dash in frustration, Centauri gave it a couple of good whacks with his right hand as the car commenced losing altitude and momentum. Alex made gargling sounds from behind the partition.

A faint rumble rose from astern. All the dash lights sprang to full life and the car began to rise once more. Wheels retracted into the underbelly while metal moved to seal them inside. Antennae appeared on the skin of the vehicle, metal flowers blossoming in the moonlight.

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