Another Place - Episode 20

Another Place Another Time

Book One

Jake and Whispers

Episode Twenty

Whispers and I had come in the previous afternoon from a four-day patrol with the LURPS. I got up early, even though I didn’t have to. I bathed Whispers and cleaned my gear at the same time. I’d discovered that was the only way to avoid multiple cleanings of both the gear and the dog. I finished at 0900 and checked with the First Sergeant to see if he had a patrol scheduled for us. He said we were clear for at least twenty-four hours, and he gave me an overnight pass to go to Vung Tau.

Vung Tau, on the shore of the South China Sea, is a resort town and has been for as long as anyone can remember. During the war, It was an in-country R&R center for both Allied forces and Viet Cong. There was never any violence there during my time in Vietnam, though that changed in the final years of the war.

I found Betty Ann at the Red Cross office and couldn’t get the grin off my face when she told me that she was free until 0800 the following day. We walked to town, had giant prawns at a delightful restaurant overlooking the ocean and then walked on the beach until almost midnight. It was hard to believe that a war was raging within miles of us.

I got the duty sergeant at the transit barracks to wake me at 0600 so I could have breakfast with Betty Ann at the Red Cross mess hall. After breakfast, I helped the group load their deuce and a half and watched them drive away, waving until they were out of sight. Then, Whispers and I walked to the Helicopter Supply Depot to hitch a ride back to Bearcat.

We hadn’t been waiting long when ten Greyhound Slicks landed on the depot helipad. Instead of shutting down like they normally did, the door gunner and crew chief from each chopper jumped out while the pilot and copilot kept the ships running at a flight idle. I stopped one of the crew chiefs that I knew and asked if I could hitch a ride with them. A funny look crossed his face and he pointed toward the first chopper and said, “Jake, you’ll have to ask Captain Sprague.”

I thought that was unusual because the crew chief knows all the details of their daily missions and normally decides who rides and who doesn’t. However, I ran to the front of the ship. Sprague saw me and motioned for me to open his door. There is a bulletproof shield on the sides of both the pilot and copilot’s seats located in a position that is almost impossible for them to reach. I opened the door and slid the Captain’s shield back. He motioned for me to lean in close, since the engine was running at a flight idle, making normal conversation impossible. I stood on the skid, leaned close to his ear, and shouted, “Whispers and I need a ride back to Bearcat. Can we go with you?

He hesitated, surprising me. I’d known Sprague and all the Greyhounds since I first arrived in country. He looked at me and held up one finger signaling he needed a minute. He keyed his radio transmitter and said something I couldn’t hear. He waited a couple of minutes for a response. When it came, he listened intently, then looked at me and said, “Jake, the Boss says you can ride with us, but you have to forget the stop we’re going to make on the way.”

I smiled and said, “No problem, Sir.”

I thought they were going to a massage parlor in Saigon, and I figured that would give Whispers and me a chance to catch up on some of the sleep we’d lost the night before. In a few minutes the crewmen returned, each of them carrying two five-gallon cans of potable water. Sprague’s crew chief asked if I were going with them.

When I told him I was, he said, “That’s good. Make yourself useful by tying down these jerry cans. We’ll be back in a minute with twelve more.”

A few minutes later, we were airborne. Strapped inside each chopper was eighty gallons of potable water in five-gallon cans. I looked at the jerry cans of water and realized that we probably weren’t going to a massage parlor or any other place that I could imagine, so I didn’t try. I figured I’d know soon enough.

We flew just off the surface of the river heading toward Saigon, some forty-five miles upstream. I guess we’d traveled about ten miles when we turned toward the southern shore and flew through a break in the trees and over a line of rice paddies. I looked through the windscreen between Sprague and the copilot and did a double take. I’d seen many strange sights in Vietnam, but none of them were close to what I saw that day. There was an airplane of some kind sitting right in the middle of a rice paddy directly in front of us. It was bright silver, like a new dime. It had short stubby delta wings and a tall tail. There was an open hatch on the roof and, as we landed, Colonel Cavanaugh came out of the hatch.

I turned and grabbed the crew chief’s arm. He grinned, leaned close, and shouted, “Yeah, I know. That’s why I couldn’t okay you riding with us.”

Colonel Cavanaugh directed the unloading of the water. The crewmen quickly carried the jerry cans to the aircraft where the crews of the gunships were waiting to pass them, from man-to-man, up to the man standing on the top of the airplane, next to the hatch. He looked like any other guy in Vietnam except for his uniform, which was a strange one-piece, shiny overall of some sort. There was an insignia on his left breast pocket, but it was unfamiliar to me. He took each can of water and carefully poured it into what I assumed to be a filler tube of some kind, in a recessed port next to the hatch.

He worked tirelessly and, in half an hour or so, he had emptied all the water cans into the airplane. He shouted down to Colonel Cavanaugh, “I’m going to see if it will start, Colonel,” then he added, “It might be a good idea to have everyone move back.”

The Colonel didn’t have to repeat the suggestion to us. We immediately backed away from the aircraft.

Within seconds, lights appeared all around the perimeter of the ship and without a sound, it lifted six or seven feet into the air. Immediately a ramp lowered from the underside of the craft and extended to the ground, coming to rest on the dike at the edge of the rice paddy. The man in silver overalls walked down the ramp, leaving his airplane silently hovering over the rice paddy.

He walked up to Colonel Cavanaugh. I was close enough to hear him say, “Colonel, I can’t thank you enough for getting me back in the air. I know I’m taking a risk staying here, but I’d like to take a few minutes to explain to all of your men what I’ve told you so they’ll understand why it is critical that they never mention what they’ve seen here.”

Colonel Cavanaugh agreed that was a good idea. He turned to Captain Sprague and said, “Billy, would you get everyone up here for a minute?”

Charlie sat down on the dike and we gathered in a semi-circle around him. When we’d settled down, Charlie said, “Gentlemen, my name is Charlie Evans. It’s important that you never mention what you’ve done and seen here today. For that to make sense to you, I think that you need to know why I’m here, so I’m going to tell you.”

Someone shouted, “That proves you’re not in the Army.” Everyone laughed which lightened things up some.

Charlie continued, “That’s a good place to start. You’re right, I’m not Army. I’m NASA or at least what NASA will become in eighty years.”

He paused and pointed to the patch on his left breast pocket, the only insignia on the uniform.

“The initials on my uniform, the letters ‘ASA’, mean Aeronautical and Space Administration. The word ‘national’ is missing because I’m from another place in time. To be exact, my home is eighty years in the future where there are no countries and there is only one government overseeing everything. That was the only way that humans could survive. There are no wars in my time, and I have an idea that you can see the advantage of that.”

Everyone laughed.

“Science and technology have advanced far beyond your time. It had to, because we were facing some major challenges. The most pressing ones were pollution and exhausting all fossil fuel supplies. Those issues united the world when everything else failed. With everyone on the planet working together for the good of all, we’ve found ways to neutralize the pollution and return the atmosphere and the land to the state it was ten thousand years ago. You’d find what we’ve done to clean up the earth, most impressive. We’ve also found sources of power that are clean, cheap, renewable, and readily available. You’ve just seen one of them.”

He pointed to his aircraft and then to the empty jerry cans stacked beside the dike.

“All of our aircraft, in fact all of our engines, run on water.”

One of the copilots seated near Charlie said, “There’s no profit in that.”

Charlie smiled and said, “You’re right, there is no profit in that. In fact, in my time, there is no profit in anything, but that’s a story we don’t have time for today. However, there is something for which we must take time.”

He paused and looked the group over. When he was sure that he had everyone’s attention, he continued.

“We’ve had the ability to travel throughout the galaxy and even beyond for many years. We theorized that we could use that technology to travel through time, but we avoided it because of the risks we felt it might entail. Then something happened that made it necessary for us to try.”

He paused and there wasn’t a sound from anyone.

“All the animals on earth stopped reproducing. No matter what we tried nothing worked. Within fifteen years there were only a handful of mammals left on the planet and now there are none.”

He paused, looked at Whispers and said, “That’s the first real dog I’ve ever seen.” Then he looked at me and asked if he could pet him.

I looked at Whispers and asked, “What about it?”

He barked sharply and I turned loose of his lead. He went straight to Charlie and licked him in the face. Everyone laughed, with Charlie laughing the loudest. Then Whispers sat down beside him and Charlie put both arms around him and buried his face in the big dog’s neck. No one said a word. We could feel Charlie’s pain. Whispers sat perfectly still until Charlie regained his composure.

A minute or so later, he straightened, keeping one arm around Whispers, as he spoke. “You can’t imagine what life is like without the animals, and you don’t even want to think about it. That’s why we decided to travel back in time and see if we could find out what went wrong, to see if we could discover why the animals decided to stop reproducing. We believe that if we can discover the reason, we might be able to prevent its ever happening. We know that’s tinkering with time, but the stakes are too high not to try,” He paused, looked at each of us and then added, “That, gentlemen, is why I’m here. Well, it’s not why I crashed in the rice paddy. I’m only here today to check the equipment and its ability to travel in time, but it seems that it takes more water to move through time than it does to move through space, and I ran out of water.”

Someone laughed but not many joined in. I think we were all thinking about life without animals, and no one found it a comforting thought.

“Anyway,” Charlie said, “I hope you see how important it is that you forget what you’ve seen today. I know it won’t be easy, but it is critical that you keep this secret.”

Colonel Cavanaugh stood as if on cue. Hands on hips, he faced us and said, “Gentlemen, I can order you not to say anything about this, but that won’t do any good unless you see why you have to keep this secret. Do you understand?”

To a man, everyone responded affirmatively. Cavanaugh said to Charlie, “You’re dealing with the Greyhounds. You can count on us.”

Then he pointed toward Whispers and me and said, “They’re with us. You can count on them, too.”

Whispers barked.

Cavanaugh nodded to Sprague and the Captain called out, “Okay, secure the jerry cans and let’s get ready to ride.”

In seconds, there was no one near Charlie, Whispers, and me. Charlie put his arm around Whispers’s neck one more time, and Whispers licked him in the mouth again. Charlie laughed, and I joined in. Then he stood, he said, softly, “We’ve got to figure this out. Somehow we’ve just got to do it.”

He patted Whispers’s head and shook my hand.

“You’ll figure it out, Charlie. Just hang in there.”

As the Greyhound choppers were nearing flight idle, Charlie took one more look at Whispers then turned and walked up the ramp. Within seconds, his aircraft lifted straight up faster than any plane or helicopter I’d ever seen. Then, it disappeared into the light cloud cover.

Twenty minutes later, we landed at Bearcat. For the rest of my time in Vietnam, I never heard a single mention of the events of that day. As for me, I didn’t even tell Betty Ann.

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