"Make no mistake about it, my friend, The old sand miner grinned; Gleets can be dangerous. "Well, I had been asking about Gleets, but I had always heard Sand Miners were a stand-offish bunch, not inclined to speak much to strangers. So I was surprised to hear him reply to the question I had just put to bartender of the Blue Star Tavern.
The Blue Star was the last building on the last street in the only town on the last planet that could be reached by any form of public transportation. I had come to Skysend City and the sandy world of Lee's End, because I heard that there were men here who could answer my questions about the legendary Gleets. In the more civilized parts of the human inhabited galaxy, Gleets were only a mysterious half heard tale. Lumped with fairies and goblins, Gleets sometimes found their way into children's stories and cheap tri-vid tapes made for the export market. But were they real? This was the question I hoped to answer.
For several years I have made a reasonably good living writing scripts and scouting locations for the syndicated tri-vid show, Unknown Worlds. The show has survived ten seasons now in the Dog-eat-dog world of the Tri-vid producers. I like to think that its success is due in some small measure to my own efforts in uncovering strange new places and creatures to perk the interest of the entertainment starved masses who spend their evenings sitting and staring at their Tri-vid sets. When I got word from one of my scouts that men who had actually seen Gleets could be found in Skysend City on the mining colony world of Lee's End, I grabbed my traveling case, activated my faithful cam-bot Ansel and bought a ticket aboard the Imperial Mail ship Aztec Princess, outbound for Heimdal in the Rep-Com.
Six weeks and eight changes of Star Liners later found me disembarking from the tramp freighter Homero Gillman at the port of Skysend City. The custom's officer took one bored look at Ansel and waived us on. The port taxi proved to be a battered and dusty old grav-truck; open-topped with a wind screen that had been scoured by the sand storms of Starsend until it was frosted completely opaque. It was anybody's guess what color the vehicle had been originally painted for it was worn clean to the metal in most places.
My cam-bot Ansel is programmed to focus his main camera on the most interesting and strange item in view, so I had to reach for my pocket controller to over-ride the program; his staring at the driver with all four opticals was becoming embarrassing. The Cabby was every bit as dusty and worn as his vehicle. His huge main of white hair and beard had been ratted, pooled and fluffed until his head looked like nothing so much as a huge pom-pom with two bright eyes and a red button nose. His gray canvas jacket was covered with buttons, badges, and oddly colored fragments of scrap metal sewn over every square centimeter from cuffs to collar.
"Its the hair, ain't it?" The Cabby grabbed Ansel by the neck and threw him into the back of the truck. Ansel's gyros screamed as he righted himself in mid air and landed, catlike, on his feet. "Folks is always interested in me hair." He grabbed my new Executive Style Samsonite case, with the folding come-along, and miniaturized grav pads, and tossed it also. forcing Ansel to leap into the front seat to avoid being hit. "I wear my hair like this so nobody will take me for one of them damn bald Sand Miners."
"Git outa there, you life-less tin bastard!" He reached behind the driver's seat and brought out a huge wrench. "No damn bot rides front seat in my cab! He waved the wrench threateningly.
Ansel squealed in fear and dove into the back. "Don't stand on ceremony!" The Cabby grabbed my arm and pulled me into the front seat. "I got a schedule to keep!" He fired up the turbines and lifted off. The vehicle lurched alarmingly as the right turbine coughed and stuttered. Out came the wrench again. "Go, damn machine, go! He hammered on the turbine nose casing. The turbine coughed a great blast of flame from its exhaust and began to speed up, all the while accompanied by a hideous earsplitting whine.
As the grav-truck lost power on the right it began to sag and skid to the right. Like some sort of maddened gnome, the white haired driver leaped up in his seat, kicked the right throttle lever all the way forward, whirled around and whacked the right turbine again. "Damn thee to hell, infernal machine, Go!" This seemed to do the trick, for the right turbine settled down to a steady whine and rapidly accelerated. The grav-truck lurched to the left and began to climb. This over balanced the driver and he fell head over heels into the back. By this time the grav-truck was in a 60 degree spiral climb to the left, and the cabby would have continued to fall right out the back of the truck, but for Ansel who released his death grip on the truck bed with one of his arms and grabbed the driver by the pants.
"Sonofabitch!" swore the driver as he climbed over Ansel. "Damned bot's good for somptin, after all." He put his foot right in the poor cam-bot's face and climbed into the driver's seat. Swearing incoherently he balanced the gravs and righted the vehicle. "Ye-haw!" he yelled as he put the nose down and set the grav-truck blasting over the sands at an amazing pace.
Ansel has no speech circuits, but he made his protest known with a high pitched whine.
"I forgot to ask ya," he looked at me with crazed eyes, his long white hair slipstreaming behind. "Was you wanten the deluxe tour of the mines or just the tourist tour of the town?"
I looked back at the huge cloud of dust raised by the shock wave of our passage. I looked forward over the edge of the frosted wind screen. A huge crested dune loomed before us. In a matter of seconds we would either bore a huge hole right through the center of the dune or die trying.
The Cabby saw the look of horror on my face and turned to look also. "Shit! Got to get that windshield replaced!" He rammed the turbine into full and switched all power to the gravs. Creaking and moaning the old grav-truck rose just enough to clear the top of the dune by no more than centimeters. Loose sand flew everywhere coating everything in the truck with dust.
"I think it would be fine if you could just take me to a good hotel!" I screamed over the slipstream.
"Ha ha! Ifen ya had taken the tourist tour," the vehicle banked into a face dragging high Gee turn. "Ya would have known there ain't no good hotels in Skysend City."
I didn't dare look down as the planet's sandy surface rushed by not a half meter from my elbow. "Perhaps a not-so-good hotel then."
"Ha Ha, You are a funny one then." Like a demented wind the grav-truck rushed between two huge boulders and across a rock strewn field. "There ain't no hotel's at all in Skysend City!"
"Where do visitors to your illustrious community stay?" I hung on for my life as the truck rushed at break neck speed into a canyon with a dry water course at the bottom.
"Such as stays long enough to want a place to stay," The vehicle flashed through a small crack in the canyon wall and over a huge dune and down a steep slope toward a tiny village surrounding a pond. ".... such stays at Easy Amy's Cathouse."
"But, but a, I ....." My protestations were cut off as the cabby snapped the truck into a one-eighty skid turn and used the main thrusters to slow down to a more reasonable pace.
"Got to take it easy," He said flipping the truck through another one-eighty, "We're almost into town. With a nod of his head he indicated a police car sitting in the shade of the WELCOME TO SKYSEND CITY, METROPOLIS OF LEE'S END sign. The cop had his hat over his face and was obviously fast asleep.
"Not much to worry about there." I pointed at the sleeping cop.
"Oh the car would wake him up if I sped past; then he would be really pissed because you woke him up."
"What do you mean, Me? You are driving."
"Yah, but when he found out that I was speeding so you could get to Easy Amy's quicker, he would have given you the ticket."
Getting a room at Easy Amy's proved more easy than I expected. Fortunately there were not many Sand Miners in town this week. Easy Amy also proved to be helpful, When I asked about Gleet stories, she directed me to the Blue Star Tavern.
Back outside the Cathouse, the mad cabby was waiting for me. "Ya sure now, ya don't want a ride to the Blue Star? Its on the other side of town!"
Ansel whimpered softly and swiveled his oculars away from the battered cab. "No thank you. I need the exercise." I was glad that I resisted his superb salesmanship. The other side of town consisted of a short walk across the main street and down two blocks.
Skysend City is a town of, to say the least, eclectic architecture; I passed a bar called Bob's Fuel tank, which was made from an old fuel tank. Buildings there were built of almost every conceivable material and all sorts of scraps, but the most unusual was the Blue Star itself. Under a huge neon laser sign, constantly flickering, winking , and sputtering, which read, BLUE STAR TAVERN AND GALLERY OF FOUND ART, was a building constructed of bits and pieces of scrap.
The single most outstanding characteristic of the Blue Star was the enormous verandah or porch which surrounded the building on three sides. This porch was filled with bits and pieces of scrap machinery, and other found items which had been cleverly assembled to make dinosaurs, aliens, families of gnomes, and caricatures of local citizens. There was a six armed Tarran made from parts of an old welding rig, and a bullet splattered, laser scarred Ralnai Warrior who had been the target of many a drunken Sand Miner.
A forlorn looking old Guardian Mining Robot, Bucket Head to most people, had been garishly painted with warpaint and fitted out as a cigar store Indian. He stood in rusty spender, sort of slumped over next to the front door. His robe was a threadbare old bedspread and his headdress was bedraggled and drooping. For a few moments I paused to look into his glazed opticals and I wondered how long it had been since he had moved his rusty limbs. Ansel hummed softly to himself, his cameras moving silently. He carefully avoided any contact with the battered old bucket head. It was almost as if he feared catching something.
Inside, the Blue Star, was similarly decorated; no single piece of furniture matched any other. The Bar had once been part of the fin of some long vanished atmosphere flyer. It was still decorated with the registration numbers. Everything in the place seemed to have been constructed out of scraps of something else. The few customers sprawled in the booths and lounging around the bar also seemed to have been made of scraps and bits of other people from some other place and time.
Closely grouped around a table in back sat a few Sand Miners. There seemed to be a constant cloud of dust surrounding them. Their slightest movements shed dust from their colorless and faded clothing. Their still-suits were cracked, gray, patched and worn. Helmets and breathers equally tired and faded, lay temporarily discarded on the floor, beside their chairs. Sparse, untrimmed gray hair, showing worn patches of scalp where constantly worn helmets and breathers fit tightly, seemed to be the common mark of the Sand Miner. Only their evil black pistols, well oiled, slung low on the hip, or ridding high in shoulder holsters, looked well cared for and very functional.
In places where sand mining is known, it is considered to be one of the lowest occupations a man can engage in. Consequentially only the dregs of society, men who can find no other work, will labor in the great mobile factories that crawl like mechanical worms over the dunes extracting minerals and amcrys from the remains of ancient sea beds. For this reason Sand Miners tend to be insular and unfriendly. So I was surprised when one of them answered my question about Gleets.
"Make no mistake about it, my friend, The old sand miner grinned; Gleets can be dangerous. "
" Are Gleets real? I asked, " Have you ever seen one?
"Buy me a beer," he grabbed me by the sleeve. "Buy me a beer, and I'll tell you all about Gleets." He pulled me over to a booth in the corner, and waived to the barkeep.
"Beers all around," It was little enough to pay for information on Gleets. "Bring a bottomless glass for my friend ......".
"Benjamin Button, first engineer, " he paused to chug-a-lug a huge glass of beer, "...of the Sand Miner Ourobouros, at your service." He filled his glass again and tossed it off without coming up for air. "Have I ever seen a Gleet?" He belched loudly and filled the glass again. "Oh, Aye. Eight times I have seen the Gleets - and eight times I've cursed the sight." Once again the glass was emptied in one gulp. "Gleets is like Mermaids, ya know. Back in the old days of sailing ships, to see a mermaid was considered to be the worst sort of omen." He paused and eyed the empty pitcher.
"More Beer!" I waved at the bartender, "Keep it coming!" "A bad omen you say?" The barkeep brought a second pitcher of beer. "Tell me about it." I filled his glass.
"I'll never forget the day I first saw him." He again drained his glass.
"The Gleet?" I filled his glass.
"No," He belched and wiped his scraggly mustache. "Lieutenant Vorheese, Bruce James; B.J. to his friends." He sipped this beer. "Good beer," He smiled.
"Lieutenant - who? What does he have to do with Gleets?"
"Everything," he became pensive, as he focused on another time long ago. "He and I were the first humans ever to see a Gleet. I was just a sprout in them days. Fresh out of the Imperial Survey Service Academy; a green Ensign, reporting to my first ship. He was standing in the main hatch, the red uniform with the old white cap and trousers that used to be the Survey Service Dress Uniform before the Second Starwar. His brass and buttons could have blinded ya, by their polish. The side boys was lined up, wearing their best white duck trousers, red and white stripped shirts and that little old white straw hat ; what they used to wear in them days. The Flags was flyin' and the boson was piping in the Admiral. The Half Moon, was a brand new ship, big as a battle cruiser, but built for long range exploration. And I was there to see it. Even better I got to be part of it. It was the finest day of my life. It was all downhill from there. If I had known I would'a run the other way, but I was young and wanted to be part of the adventure, more than I wanted anything else."
"What year was that?"
"Oh, that were back in '35. June 1, 2235, to be exact; Montevideo Star Base. We lifted off at twelve noon sharp on a voyage of discovery that was planned to last five years. Out to the frontier, and beyond, we concentrated on star systems that could possibly hold habitable worlds. We were looking for new colonies for the Imperium."
"Stars came and went, we spent little time on a star that held no habitable planets. We just charted the number and type of planets, mapped their orbits and went on to the next. Months went by and the whole crew was itchy to find an Earth type world. There's few colony worlds that don't have oceans, mountains or rivers named after the captains and crews of the exploration ships. It used to be a tradition in the Imperial Survey Service to name the first active volcano found after the ship's cook. We all wanted the honor of having a mountain or bay named for us.
Finally the day came when we had our instruments focused on a blue-green earth type world. After a careful examination from orbit, we spiraled down and landed in a lovely grassy clearing surrounded by a deep wood. Although animal, plant and insect life abounded, there was no evidence of any civilization or intelligence life. No artificial lights could be seen on the dark side of the planet. No radio, radar or any other detectable type of communication signals were detected. It looked like a prime world for colonization.
After hours of closed ship sampling and testing, the Captain allowed the crew to disembark. The first thing was the ceremony of claiming the planet for the Imperium and the naming of it for Captain Hudson. It was a perfect day outside, the air was earthlike enough to be breathable without any compressors, or filters; warm and pleasantly scented.
Lieutenant, B.J. Vorheese and I had become fast friends on the outbound voyage, so we set out together on a short exploration of the nearby woods. We had not gone very far when I saw something moving in the trees above. It was pail green and naked, hanging upside down like a sloth. The creature was grazing on the tree leaves and moving ever so slowly.
'Let's get a sample for dissection,' B.J. said. Before I could object he had drawn his gyrojet pistol and fired. He was always a good shot. Too damn bad; why couldn't he have missed?" He paused long enough to take a long draw on his glass.
"He shot a Gleet? Why is there no record of the dissection?"
"'Cause there never was no dissection." The old Sand Miner stared into his glass, "We panicked, you see. We ran. We didn't stay long enough to pick up the body that fell from the trees. We walked over to look at it; lying there all limp and dead. The creature was green, but his blood was red as any human. He lay there on the leafy floor of the forest; blood all over. Blood on our hands; blood on our cloths. The thing was just enough like a man to be un-nerving; and when it opened its dying eyes and looked at us as if to say, 'What have I done to you; You've killed me!' Then it's eyes glazed over and it was dead.
What had been a lovely day was suddenly dark and gloomy. The woods were full of strange and terrifying noises. We were filled with unaccountable terror and ran for the ship. The rest of the crew felt the strange change too, and the ship was full of panic. We lifted off in chaos, and were ten parsecs out before anyone thought to ask why. The Captain became furious when he recovered his wits and began looking for someone to blame. B.J. looked a me and I looked at him; we weren't about to tell anyone what happened.
The Captain mustered the crew in the rec room and began the inquisition. While everyone was trying to point the finger at everyone else, a Gleet came into the room and dropped a small book a B.J.'s feet. He said only one word "Gleet". Then he turned and waddled out of the room.
"After him, get that stowaway!" the Captain cried. But there was no finding the Gleet. We searched that ship from top to bottom. Every compartment and even the crew's personal luggage. We found nothing. Only then did anyone think to ask about the book. It was a copy of an ancient earth poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. A story about a sailor back in the ancient days of sailing ships, who shot a sea bird called the Albatross. This was bad luck and the body of the bird was hung about his neck. Thereafter, he and his ship was cursed with evil luck. There was one passage marked. It read:
"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus! -
Why look'st thou so?" - With my cross - bow
I shot the Albatross.So it wasn't very long before everyone on board knew how B.J. had shot the Gleet."
"Oh, that's how the Gleets got their name?"
"They were always referred to by that name from then on." I filled his glass again and called for more beer.
"How did he get aboard the ship? I asked
"The most popular theory was that he came aboard during the panic that proceeded our lift off. But that theory doesn't answer the question of how he got off the ship. Or for that matter where the little book came from. It was published in New York City, in 1'1. It was over 300 years old but in surprisingly good condition for all that." "There was no trace of the Gleet?" I was wondering whether to believe this or not?
"Not a single hair." He drained his glass and belched. "I met a man a few years ago; he was an astrogator on a tramp freighter. Swore he had seen six Gleets riding in a boat, a sail boat, with one square sail."
"Well....." Even Ansel clicked and whirred in a puzzled manor. ".. .. is that so unusual? Do they enjoy sailing on the Gleet world?"
"It wasn't the boat. It was where it was at 97 deep space, light years from anywhere. Said it was surrounded by a blue force field. The boat with the Gleets aboard seriously out maneuvered the tramper and then disappeared into space. No trace, no gravetic wave variations, and other than the visible spectrum, no emissions."
He could see the disbelief on my face. "Nobody believed him either. Nobody, but me. You see I already had two other reports of Gleets traveling in deep space. The other two were Gleets riding on a raft made of tree trunks." He paused, cocked an eyebrow and stared at Ansel. Ansel quickly pulled back for a long shot.
"Were the sightings unlucky for the ships?" I remembered the mermaid story.
"You might say," He gave up trying to stare down Ansel, and turned again to his beer, "...all three ships destroyed within six months of the Gleet sightings. One wrecked in a freak landing accident, one destroyed when the bulk cargo she was loading caught fire, and the last one disappeared in space, not two days after she lifted off from Skysend City."
"And your ship, The Half Moon, you said?"
"She had been a happy ship, you see, but only two weeks after our flight from the Gleet world, we found ourselves in the middle of a mutiny. Dr. Fletcher, the chief extobiologist, seized the ship. B.J. and I were dragged from our beds, tied hand and foot , and thrown into the Captains gig. As we lay there, we saw two Gleets peering through the front port. They had their mouths pressed to the glass, inflating their cheeks and wiggling their obscene yellow tongues at us . They crossed their eyes and giggled, they made obscene gestures at us, then they slid down the window and disappeared. I looked at B.J. and we both had a sinking feeling.
The gig was a small starship designed to comfortably accommodate four people on short interplanetary hops. There were thirteen of us jammed aboard. The rebels had shot out the astrogation computer and cast us adrift in unexplored space. The Captain was trying to navigate by dead reckoning and on the fourth day the equipment that recycled our waste into emergency rations broke down under the increased load of thirteen people. We tried to fix it, but the best we could do caused it to produce an edible, but foul brown soup. After eighty four days in space we had all lost considerable weight and were a little bit mad. The Captain's strict discipline was the only thing that kept us from killing each other.
Finally we found our way to the Rep-Com Colony world of Pinsk IV which was marginally earthlike, but wrapped in an ice age. The only town of any size on Pinsk was Rincon City, which was built in a thermally heated natural oasis surrounded by glaciers. But it looked like Paradise to us. After a few days in hospital and a whole lot of good food, we all felt a lot better." He took a big swig of beer, "It looked like we had escaped, things were definitely looking up."
"What about the mutineers and The Half Moon? Did you ever find out what happened to them?
"Yah, three days after they threw us out, they ran into two Ralnai Heavy Cruisers, who shot the crap out of them and took the survivors prisoner." He looked at me and nodded, "Yep, it was Tarrokk-kor, old Steel Claw himself, and he arrived to take over Pinsk IV the same day we got out of the hospital."
"So you were right there at the beginning of the founding of the Ralnai Imperium?"
"Such was our luck. B.J. and I tried to join up with a band of rebels hiding in the ice caves, but the Ralnai caught us. We made a fight of it. We were just foolish enough to think that two unarmed humans could take one Ralnai Warrior if we surprised him. So I jumped on his back and B.J. Went for a flying tackle. We got the Ralnai down, and I pulled his disruptor out of his claws. Well let me tell you brother, you gotta watch out for their tails. He hit me with his tail and knocked me flat. I went skidding over the frozen floor of the ice cave and bounced off a stalactite. I tried to get up but the world was spinning too fast. Poor B.J. found out that Ralnai can fight with their feet. The Ralnai was down but kicking and B.J. caught one right in the crotch. The Ralnai's sharp toe claws took off a critical part of B.J.'s anatomy. Well that Ralnai chained the both of us and dragged us back into the city, where we were thrown into a prison compound. After a while they sent in a doctor to look us over. It was the first time I ever heard that there were humans who worked for the Ralnai. This Ralnai slave doctor was the third generation of his family born to Ralnai slavery. He wasn't much of a doctor, but he did patch B.J. up some and stopped the bleeding."
"You mean he lost his ah....."
"Yep, took it right off. B.J. was pretty mad about it as you can well imagine. Ain't too many men would take that lying down. Except that is just what he had to do. He hurt pretty badly and could hardly walk. As for me I just had a minor brain concussion. I was all right until I tried to do anything and then I'd fall over in a faint. So B.J. and I were too sick to be put to work.
We were lucky in that however, as we missed the slave rebellion and the massacre that came right afterwards. Even so it looked bad for us. We didn't know from one day to the next whether the Ralnai were going to kill us or keep us. After about two months they put us on board an old tramp ship they had captured somewhere and we lifted off for a life of slavery in the Ralnai Imperium.
The old tub had been called the Jenny, but the Ralnai had renamed it Kol-kurra. Means 'far traveled' or something like that. She was a far traveled ship all right; she was a good many parsecs overdue for some serious repairs. There was only three Ralnai aboard and only one, Commander Nitoakka, had been trained as starship crew. He had been the commander of a scout vessel before being promoted to command of this flying garbage hulk. There were two human slaves of the Ralnai aboard, Killrain and Joe Miller. Joe Miller was a rabbity little man who seemed to be in a state of perpetual terror. He was scared to death of the Ralnai and wouldn't dare disobey anything they told him. The only thing Joe the rabbit was more scared of than the Ralnai was Killrain. Killrain was an ignorant and vicious thug who had found his calling in life as an overseer. Then there were the prisoners, fifteen men and twenty six women, bound for some unknown Hell of slavery.
Commander Nitoakka was space wise enough to know when the gravetic drives were out of synchronization, but he couldn't fix it, so the old Jenny wallowed and staggered through space falling in and out of hyperdrive with ever increasing frequency. Finally there came a day when she wouldn' t pump hyper at all. Well I was the only trained starship engineer on board, and those Ralnai had access to all our records. So they sent that bully Killrain, around. He wasn't exactly polite about how he asked me to help with the engines, but by that point I would have done anything to get out of that dark, cold, cargo hold where the male prisoners were kept. It didn't take long to find out that Killrain couldn't even read, and knew nothing of starship maintenance.
Well, I made a big deal out of the repair and told Killrain that if I was not allowed to repair all the main circuit boxes in the ship she would probably blow us all to bits one night while we were asleep. He followed me around looking over my shoulder but I was able to discover all I needed to know. I rigged the circuits so that the lights in the ship would momentarily dim whenever the heater in the sand bath was turned on. Then I convinced Killrain that the engines needed constant attention. I would have to stay close by to tend them until we made port.
Commander Nitoakka didn't like the idea of a slave being out of the pen for more than a few minuets, but he liked the idea of having to break communications silence to call for a tow even less. That would have meant much lose of 'face' for him. Perhaps even reassignment to the breeder pens. So the Commander gave Killrain personal charge of me, and he handed Killrain a Neuronic Whip as he did so."
"A Neuronic Whip; I thought those were outlawed?"
"Not on the Ralnai Worlds, they make extensive use of them on their slaves. They like 'em because they work directly on the nerves, causing almost unbearable pain without causing any actual physical damage.
"Killrain used it on you?"
"You bet, he did. He couldn't resist demonstrating it. The bastard whipped me unconscious. When I came to I could hardly move for hours after. It hurt just to breath. Killrain thought he could break me just like he broke poor Joe the Rabbit. But in my case it just made it easier to what I had to. You see the male prisoner hold was just through the bulkhead from the engine room, and of course every well equipped engineer 's tool box contains an Erikson cutter-shaper. Killrain had obviously never seen one, so I told him it was a demagnetizer and accustomed him to it as I waved it over all the equipment 'collecting loose electrons'. I waited until the dimming of the lights told me that the sand bath was in use. The Erikson had a eighteen inch variable force blade and it was only four inches from Killrain's neck when I extended the blade. You should have seen the surprised look on his face as his head came off. It was only a few minutes work to cut through the bulkhead and free the male prisoners. We had the Erickson Cutter, the nuronic whip and whatever tools or pieces of scrap we could make do for weapons.
Fortunately two of the Ralnai were in the Sand Bath. Can you imagine what happened to them when the gravity went off. The two in the Sand Bath were both untrained for zero G. They panicked and stirred up the sand. The poor bastards choked to death. Tuff, but it saved us the trouble of killin' them ourselves. As it was Commander Nitoakka killed three of us before we got him. "
"Where was Lieutenant Vorhees while all this was going on?" I asked as the engineer paused for a swig.
"Oh, he was still pretty sore, but the zero G state helped him to move about without using his legs much. He did his part in the fight, got close enough to Nitoakka to brain him with a spanner, just as the Ralnai Commander shot him in the foot. The end result was that the Ralnai went spinning head over heels, knocked silly, and poor B.J. lost his right foot."
"The Disruptor blew his foot right off?"
"Well not quite off, but it sure made a mess of it. So much that we had to cut it off later to keep B.J. from getting Gangrene in the wound.
"What happened to the Ralnai?"
"He never had a chance after that. The mob of prisoners, several of which had been trained in zero G combat, swarmed over him and literally cut him to pieces. It was a disgusting sight, The Ralnai was dead, three of our side were drifting corpses and B.J. was clutching his ruined foot and screaming. All the while squirting blood all over. The blood formed little drops and blobs in the weightlessness which floated carried by the air currents everywhere. Soon everyone was covered from head to toe. We got a tourniquet on B.J.'s leg and stopped the bleeding. Then I swam back down to the engine room to reset the gravity."
"What about the other human slave, Joe the Rabbit, you called him?"
"We found him dead in the command bridge. When the lights and gravity went out he went directly to Commander Nitoakka. Whether to warn him or attack him; who knows. Didn't matter anyway. Nitoakka killed him first.
So we had the ship. Fortunately one of the survivors was an astrogater. B.J. and I were the only other survivors that had ever had starship engineer training, so we took over command of the old Jenney. It took about three days to do the necessary repairs to her drives and then we sent her wallowing through hyperdirve toward the nearest human colony at Blackstar."
"How long did it take you to get there?" I asked, trying to remember whether I had ever heard of a colony called Blackstar. "And how did you avoid the Ralnai Patrols and scouts?"
"We were in space sixty four days." He said with a smile. "Sixty four wonderful days." When he noted my puzzled look, he continued. "You see we couldn't go directly toward human claimed space; we had to jump from star system to star system. We would make a short run then hide on the surface of a planet or try to loose ourselves in an asteroid belt. This is how we avoided the Ralnai Patrols. That's why it took us so long to make a journey that normally would only take about six days. Then too there were the women. Several of the female captives were quite good looking and determined to reward us for saving them from a life a slavery among the Ralnai. They made some very special efforts to reward us. It was wonderful while it lasted."
"What about Lieutenant Vorhees?" I asked, "Where was he while all this was going on?"
"Well we might have taken even longer to make port, if it hadn't been for poor B.J. constantly haranguing us on. He was understandably desperate to find a medical facility where he could get a transplant and get his foot rebudded. We did the best we could to relieve him of his pains, but that was not the same as repairing.
The medical facility on Blackstar was not of the highest quality, and the best they could do was to patch up his stump and fit him for an artificial foot. He still limped but had his mobility back after a few weeks. They told him he would have to get to a larger facility before he could have the other problem taken care of. In the mean time we had to make a living, and the war with the Ralnai had really messed up the colonial economies in that sector. Every one was afraid the Ralnai would attack; businesses were shutting down, and people were leaving on every available ship for the larger population centers where they could feel more secure. The cost of passage off planet had gone literally sky high."
"What about the ship you captured, the Jenney? What happened to your ship?"
"Well the agents for her former owners claimed her. They fought our claim to prise money, on the ground that we had taken her by mutiny not by combat. Well we had no money to fight in court and so the issue was delayed until the owners could refit the ship and fill it with paying passengers. They lifted off before we could get an injunction to stop her. Later I heard she had disappeared with out a trace. She never made port; I don't know whether the Ralnai got her or her old engines blew up in deep space. In any case we were not on her. We were stranded with no money in a colony that was rapidly becoming a ghost town.
The only place we could get jobs was a deep underground mine. The owners of the place were trying to get one more good load of Amcrys out before the Ralnai over ran the place. It was bad, we were working day and night, because every time a ship left the colony every one who could afford it was on board. The labor force was down to nothing. B.J. and I were supervising and maintaining 35 Guardian type, bucket head, mining robots. A job that had previously been done by ten men working three shifts. The owners had promised us that we would be able to join the crew of the ore barge that was coming to take off the last load of Amcrys.
The barge came and we loaded a fortune in Amcrys aboard. But we had no sooner sealed the hatch covers when the Ralnai attacked. I think they were just waiting for us to do all the work before they stepped in to grab the goodies. It wasn't much of a fight, the owners ran in their private yacht, and the crew of the barge surrendered, B.J. and I hid. Never did see the barge crew after that. I think the Ralnai shot'em."
"So where did you hide?" by this time I was thoroughly fascinated with this strange tale. True or not, it was one of the best stories I had ever heard.
"We had gotten to know that mine pretty well and we hid down in the Robot maintenance garage which was down about six levels and off in a mined out portion of the tunnel system. There were Ralnai everywhere; stick'n their stupid noses into everything. We had a good place to hide, down in the drain pit for the used oil. The Ralnai never thought to look there."
"Wow! I would never think anyone would hide in an oil drain pit. What did you eat and how did you sleep?"
"Well that was just the problem. After cowering in the drain pit for three days we finally came to the conclusion that the Ralnai weren't just going to raid and go away. They had come to stay. And we had nothing to eat and every time we came out of the pit we left a slimy trail of used oil behind us. It was a mess. They say that disparate men are dangerous men, and that was true.
After about three days the Ralnai all left the mine. Evidently they were all attending some sort of review or parade. Heard later that Tahrokk Korr himself was supposed to be handing out medals. We left the drain pit and wiped ourselves off as well as we could. We got some coveralls out of the lockers and began to reprogram the Guardians as warbots. Once we got the first two or three done, then they could help us with the rest. The job went quickly and within three hours we had thirty five Guardian Warbots unfortunately no weapons other that hand tools.
We armed a couple of the bucket heads with demolition charges. There were plenty of them around; the owners, had planed to blow the mine when they left it. These two bucket heads were our suicide squad. We planed to run them into a crowd of Ralnai and then detonate the charges by remote control. The rest of the robots were armed with sharpened spades and force swords cobbled up from mining tools. Grenades were made from demolition charges and mining explosives. Once we got the robots diverted from their duties in the mine and set them to working for us, it didn't take long before we were ready to attack."
"Didn't the Ralnai notice the robots weren't doing their jobs?"
"No, once the Ralnai found out that the robots weren't any threat to them they paid no more attention to them than any other piece of equipment. This was what we were counting on. The warbots had get close to the Ralnai to attack with hand to hand weapons. The Ralnai disruptors have no effect on warbots but the Ralnai could easily out run one of those old slow bucket heads. So our plan depended on the Ralnai ignoring the robots until it was too late.
It worked really well. The robots wandered everywhere, carrying tools and machine parts. The Ralnai just watched them walk past assuming they were still working on their original programming. We were able to use the robot's optics as roving video cameras, much as your little friend here." He nodded in Ansel's direction. "We could see everything. We located all their guard posts, and the positions of the off duty troops. It was great!"
"You were lucky it was still in the early days of the Second Starwar. I guess no one had used robots against them at that time." "What ever the reason, the Ralnai just completely ignored the warbots until it was too late. We found out that Tarokk Kor had visited and handed a bunch of decorations, given a speech and then left. Well Ralnai are not real fun guys, but they do like to drink and party occasionally. Particularly drink; they have this really nasty tasting beer which is about 24 proof alcohol. They like to drink massive quantities of it; and then there is the fact that Ralnai are much more susceptible to the mind numbing qualities of the devil's brew than your average human. The Ralnai were celebrating their victory and quite a party it was. There were drunk Ralnai laying in their puke every where the warbots looked."
"You mean to tell me that the Ralnai just ignored their security and all got drunk?" This just wasn't consistent with the reputation of the great and terrible Ralnai warriors.
"Oh no. They were partying in shifts. Only about half of the Ralnai were staggering drunk. The rest were either on guard or in their barracks. But this reduced the odds against us from four to one to about two to one. It was very encouraging.
Now if this was the shaft head of the mine," he inverted an empty beer pitcher in the middle of the table. "...and this was the main mine complex and headquarters, now the Ralnai barracks," he arranged his helmet on the table, "...and these.." he pulled his pistols and sat them on the table also, "...represent the positions of the two heavy Powerguns the Ralnai had emplaced. These two glasses will show the positions of the two starships." he banged the empty glasses down. "There was two light cruisers." You could tell he was really enjoying this part of the story.
He jumped up from the table and ran to the bar, where he scooped up a handful of pretzels and some olives. He reached over and grabbed a hard boiled egg and ran back to the table where he began to arrange these items into his makeshift map.
"Now the olives are the Ralnai guard posts, and the crew of the heavy power guns. These pretzel pieces are the bucket head warbots as B.J. and I positioned them from our hiding place deep in the mine."
"What about the egg," I asked.
"I was just coming to that," he said taking the egg and swooping it over the table. "Just as we were about to spring our trap. A Ralnai heavy cruiser of the Burning Wind Class landed right here." He placed the egg right in front of the barracks. "The Ralnai planetary commander himself had showed up to join in the celebration. Dammed if they didn't move up a bunch of troops up to form an honor guard for the old lizard. Well this was a complication. We were spread really thin as it was. Now we had to deal with a last minute change of plans.
Oh! I nearly forgot," he bent over, reached down and grabbed my foot. "I need your shoe for a minute." He pulled off my left shoe and placed it on the table next to the two glasses representing the two light cruisers. This is the barge; a huge 300 ton class C bulk carrier, The Red Star company ship, Bulgar. No armament, no screens, but a hull built of heavy gage steel plate, designed for massive loads and rough treatment. We had to get from here," he indicated the upturned pitcher, "... the pit head of the mine to here," he pointed at my shoe, "...the barge."
"Why didn't you try to capture one of the light cruisers instead? You would have had a ship with some armament in that case."
"Well at that time, no free human had seen the inside of a Ralnai command bridge. We didn't know then how similar the controls would be. For all we knew it could have been so alien that there would have been no way for us to use it. There could have been booby traps or other lock outs. We decided not to chance it but to go with the barge. We knew we could fly her. Also it was loaded with a fortune in Amcrys. Instead we had determined to destroy both cruisers by means of a Warbot suicide bomb. But we had only prepared two such warbots. Now we had to deal with a third Ralnai ship. One which was fully crewed and guarded by more than a dozen of the filthy green lizards.
There was no more time left we had to initiate our attack, while they were still occupied with the celebration. So B.J. and I made our way up to the pit head of the mine. We activated the attack program which we had prepared and all hell broke loose. The two suicide bombers each ran under one of the light cruisers and blew himself up. There was smoke and flame everywhere as the bucket head warbots attacked the Ralnai Guard posts. The Ralnai were loosing badly at first. They had never fought warbots before and their disruptors and even the Death Wind grenade launchers were having no effect on the warbots. Every guardian hit by a grenade from the launchers was knocked off his feet, but they just got right back up again and kept coming. It wasn't until the Ralnai realized that they could out run and out maneuver the Guardian Warbots, that they began to discover that a force sword could be used to disarm the warbots.
Fortunatly for us only the Ralnai officers were regularly armed with a force sword. But there were way too many Ralnai officers. As the tide of battle turned, B.J. and I reached the barge. Flame and fragments from the explosions under the light cruisers had left the Ralnai guards detailed to the barge, looking like burnt meat.
We jumped over their smoldering corpses, B.J. grabbed up a Ralnai disruptor and fired a long burst at a single Ralnai jet belting his way towards us. The fire caught him in mid jump, his gyros tumbled, and he crashed headlong in the sand. I ran for the command bridge of the barge.
Even through the thick hull of the barge, I could hear the explosions and sounds of battle; the sharp crack of a large power gun. I prayed that it was our side had fired it, not the Ralnai. I dashed into the command bridge and what do you think I saw?"
"Ralnai guards?" I asked as he signaled the barkeep for more beer.
"A Gleet!" He said, filling the two glasses that until now had represented two Ralnai Light Cruisers.
"A Gleet? How did he get there?"
"Who knows how Gleets get anywhere?" he paused for a long swig. "This Gleet was wearing the feather bonnet of a Ralnai Deathmaster and standing on the back of the command pilot's chair. Very casually he was urinating into the seat!"
"Did you shoot him?"
"If I'da been armed with anything but knife I think I would have shot him. As it was I was thinking in terms of putting my knife into his little butter colored belly and twisting it till his guts squirted out, but I heard B.J. scream and I turned and ran back down the stairs to the air lock. There I found B.J. white faced and holding the stump of his left arm. The lock door was closed and there was a big tell tail red smear of blood on the door frame."
"Don't those doors have some sort of safety device to prevent people from getting caught in them?"
"Yah, they do, but this one had failed to work. You see one of the burnt Ralnai guards that we ran past, wasn't quite dead. They can be awfully tuff, those reptile types. One of them, stumbling over his own guts had grabbed onto B.J's left arm, just as he was trying to enter the lock. B.J. couldn't get loose, but he had to get inside, so he dragged the dying Ralnai into the lock and tried to close the inner door on the Ralnai. With all his strength the Ralnai tried to pull B.J. back into the airlock where he could get at him. The door closed and neatly severed B.J's arm just above the wrist. B.J. was in bad shape; he fainted as I tied off his stump with a clamp from the emergency kit. There was no more time for anything else, we had to get out of there. There was the sharp crack of a power gun and the smell of burning that penetrated the hull of the old barge. I ran for the command bridge. The Gleet was gone but the command pilot's seat ran with foul smelling Gleet piss. No time to wipe it up; I sat in it, and fired up the barge engines. She may have been old and ugly, but she had sweet engines. Some one had loved those power banks. She fired right up and within seconds I had full maneuvering power.
As the barge lifted off, the port docking screen showed the last of the Ralnai crew dashing into the heavy cruiser. Her port closed and she began to power up. The two light cruisers lay broken backed in wreckage, so they were no longer a threat, but that Burning Wind class cruiser could out run, out maneuver, and outshoot the barge in a matter of minutes."
"What did you do?" I was beginning to wonder about the veracity of this story.
"Well", he said, grabbing my shoe, "...we lifted off as fast as possible. The old barge's engines were screaming, but she unstuck neatly." He illustrated this by lifting the shoe off the table slightly as if it were very heavy. "I knew we had only seconds to live. If that Ralnai could power up his lasers we would be cooked. There was only one chance and I took it." He flew the shoe directly over the egg representing the Ralnai cruiser. "I took 'er right over the Ralnai and cut the power to the drives, keeping only the inertial gravs on. Dropped that three hundred thousand ton barge right on that sucker!" He slammed the shoe down on the egg, smashing it to bits. "Yep!" the old Sandminer grinned, "..It looked just like that too. I wish I could have seen it, but there was no way to see through the hull of the barge. Smashed that ship right into the ground. There was no need to bury the crew, just shovel a little dirt into the hole. Hah!"
I was impressed, but still doubtful that these two bunglers could escape in a barge. "They must have had other ships on planet, how did you escape them?"
"We didn't, they shot us down and we died! Hah, hah, hah. No, seriously we didn't escape them; we hid again. This time we hid the barge too."
"Oh come on now! You expect me to believe that you hid a class C bulk cargo hauler from the Ralnai fleet. You found a conveniently hollow asteroid, perhaps?"
"We hid all right. Not far from the mine was a large and deep natural lake which had been used as a tailings pond. This lake was so polluted with heavy metal tailings that no sensor could hope to penetrate the surface for more than a foot or two, and that lake was over 150 feet deep. The mud on the bottom was more than deep enough to cover the barge. I flew directly to the lake and let ER sink. Down deep into the mud, she sank, and I cut the drives and all but the essential power to the life support units. We sat there buried in the mud for three weeks, before we dared come to the surface to listen for communications traffic.
There was none. The Ralnai were gone. We didn't know it, of course, but the Ralnai and the Federation were right in the middle of the great battle of Termius Station. The ship losses were so high that the Ralnai were recalling every ship that could conceivably arrive in time to help.
We did our standard routine of jumping from star system to star system, stopping and hiding frequently to avoid Ralnai patrols. We needn't have bothered; there were no Ralnai patrols, but we didn't know that. We knew there was a hell of a fight going on somewhere, but could garner little intelligence from listening to the subspace traffic. Most of it was in military codes which we couldn't understand. Once we reached Federation space we set course for the Imperium. We weren't going to take a chance on losing another prize to the Rep-Com courts.
We were uncomfortable, but not too bad off. The Barge had been equipped for six crew so there was plenty to eat. The auto doc kept B.J. sedated for most of the time, so we were getting along. We spent our days dreaming of how we would spend our shares of the fortune in Amcrys we had on board. We were going to be very rich!"
"It sounds as if things worked out for you for once." I filled his glass again.
"So we thought, until the Gleet paid us another visit."
"They just wouldn't leave you along, then?"
"It was my sleeping shift and I was dreaming of the wonders of being rich, when the Gleet awoke me with a big sloppy kiss. I thought a first I was a kid again and my old dog was licking my face, but when I awoke, it was to that hideous grin, and insane cackle of the Gleet. I leaped up to run after him. He darted through the cabin door and I followed at full run. I wanted so bad to put my hands on that little green bastard. In my mind I could see myself twisting his head till it came off. I ran through the door and crashed headlong into something very large and very hard.
When my head stopped spinning I sat up and saw a gray colored marine in full battle armor. He was sitting up too. And behind him a second marine held a laser rifle pointed my way. The first marine got quickly to his feet, grabbed me by the shirt front and yanked me to my feet. 'You stupid sonofabitch,' I remember him yelling at me; then he hit me with his armored fist."
"Marines? Had you been boarded by an Imperial ship?"
"Would that it were so. These were Ameron Marines; we had been boarded by an Ameron Raider, while we slept."
"Amerons? I seem to remember some sort of story about an uprising, just before the start of the Second Starwar. But they were sort of primitive farmer types. They didn't ever have a navy or marines."
"Ever been to New Hope?" He asked with a sour look.
"New Hope, the Ameron planet?"
"Well you needn't put it on your vacation itinerary. They had a Navy, of sorts. I know I was boarded by one of their raiders.
When I came to, I couldn't see at all out of one eye, and not too well out of the other. I had fist marks on my face for weeks. The Captain of the Raider Koavet'was Lieutenant Commander Nicholas Cramm. His uniform was jet black with white trim and black space boots to the knees. He was ever so proper and starched. He listened politely while I raved on about his seizing my ship.
'There is a problem with your registration. Your ship, the Class C barge, Bulgar is registered to the Red Star Mining Company of Isis in the Rep-Com. Its master is listed as Captain Jon Krogman. You and your companion are citizens of the Imperium and claim to be members of the Imperial Survey Service. How then is this ship in your command? What happened to the Captain and crew? You are perhaps pirates?'
Well it didn't take long for me to explain. I told him every thing that had happened to us since we came to Blackstar Colony. He was very sympathetic, but insisted that we must present our case to the Judgment Machine. I was understandably leery of such a course, but had little choice in the matter as the Koavet was liberally supplied with mean looking and well armed marines.
The Judgment Machine proved to be a small but comfortably fitted room aboard the Ameron Ship. There were chairs and a table for us. Captain Cramm, two of his marines, B.J. and I sat down at the table. Some sort of hologram projector made the far wall of the room appear as if it were a court room with three judges dressed in black robes and wearing strange little white hats.
There was no ceremony or ritual as is usual in courts; Captain Cramm simply presented the facts to the judges. They then began to question us. B.J. and I answered as best we could. It soon became obvious that one of the Judges was acting as our advocate and one was acting as prosecutor. The senior Judge in the center was acting as referee. After several minutes of questioning. The Judges began to confer amongst themselves.
Very quickly they came to a decision. 'Based on the evidence given by all parties, we have come to the conclusion that the Class C Bulk Cargo Barge, Bulgar, having been captured from the shipmaster and owners by the forces of the Ralnai Imperium, was a legal prize of war, and thus in the ownership of the Ralnai Imperium at the time it was seized by those persons identifying themselves as Lieutenant Bruce James Vorhees and Ensign Benjamin Button of the Imperial Survey Service. Therefor it is our judgment that the Bulgar is now the legal property of the afore mentioned Lieutenant Vorhees and Ensign Button. Do you concur with this judgment?
Well of course B.J. and I did so very vocally. We took this ship in honorable warfare, destroying three enemy ships in the process and who knows how many of the slimy lizards. Now all we had to do was get Captain Cramm and his marines off our ship and we could go about our own business.
But it was not to be. Captain Cramm seemed genuinely sorry that he must inform us that a state of war existed between the Ameron Republic and the Imperium. We were to consider ourselves prisoners of war and our ship and its cargo as a legitimate prize of war."
The old Sandminer paused for a moment as two small tears coursed through the dust on his face. "I thought I would never get over it. More than twenty million credits worth of Amcrys, our hope of the future gone in seconds."
He chugg-a-lugged another beer, belched and said, "Well easy come - easy go. We risked our lives and B.J. lost a hand for a fortune in Amcrys and those damn Amerons just walked in and picked it up while we were asleep."
"So what happened to you? Where did they take you?"
"Oh they took us to New Hope, to the city of Tekoa where they had a fine new jail. The Jail had been built just the year before by the Imperial Forces under contract to GEM Co. to hold Ameron dissidents. B.J. and I spend two long years in that hole. We met some interesting folks though: a couple of Starguard jump troopers that had been captured during the Ameron Rebellion, an Imperial scout pilot, and several merchant crews; most taken just like us, not knowing there was even a war on."
"How was that? I mean the merchant crews not being aware they were traveling through a war zone?"
"Well come to find out later, the Imperium wanted the whole Ameron Rebellion kept secret. They were embarrassed because the Federation got beat on that one. To this day I don't believe the average citizen of the Imperium even knows there is such a place as New Hope, let alone that there was a war here. It all kind of got swallowed up in the great battles and publicity surrounding the Second Starwar."
"Wasn't the Ameron Rebellion concluded by treaty shortly after the battle of Medius Gap? Didn't the Amerons repatriate you once the war was over?"
"Oh they were ready enough to send us home. The Starguard prisoners and the Scout Pilot were on their way back within two weeks of the treaty. The merchant crews took a little longer but they were freed within two months. B.J. and I however seem to have fallen through some sort of administrative crack. The Ameron Government lost or misfiled our records and so we were not included on the list of either POWs or captured merchant crews. By the time that mistake had been discovered and our request for repatriation had been filed with the Imperium, through the agency of the Rep-Com embassy, (there was no representative of the Imperium on New Hope), the Imperial Survey Service had been incorporated into the Imperial Navy and since our ship had been lost in space, we were listed as dead. So as far as the Imperium was concerned we did not exist. We were stateless persons, refugees in the Galaxy as it were."
"The Ameron Government must have had a hard time dealing with that. I have heard of their passion for order." "They kept us in jail for quite a while then I think they were getting tired of feeding us, so they turned us loose, late one cold Friday night. At first we were thrilled to be free, but soon the reality of our situation caught up with us. We had no money, little or no cloths, our hair and beards were long, and poor B.J. still only had a stump for a left hand and limped when he walked. To make the situation worse, it was coming on winter; and winter on New Hope was the equivalent of eight earth months of freezing hell. We were on the streets taking shelter in an old packing case."
"Didn't the Amerons have some sort of system for helping the indigent?"
"There were no indigent to help, except us. All the Amerons belonged to family organizations which took care of their own. We were begging on the street to get money for food. We got so cold and desperate we
committed petty crimes, in hopes we would be arrested and thrown in jail. At least in jail we could be warm and fed."
"Did it work?" I asked wondering at how the old Sandminer had ever survived the cruel winter on New Hope.
"For a while it did. The problem was that we did not officially exist; consequently the police would take us to jail and then the next day they would have to release us because they couldn't charge people who did not exist. The courts threw out the cases as fast as the prosecutor could bring them. For a while we got along all right; we would just walk into stores and take what we wanted, knowing that the police would not arrest us. We could get food and clothing, but still could not get shelter that way. For a while we were a real thorn in the side to the local merchants. The nights were getting colder and we had no warm place to stay. Fortunately we were able to appropriate plenty of warm clothing and food. We felt they owed it to us, you know. They stole our ship and our fortune. Then they kept us in prison for two years with no pay of any sort. They owed us big!"
"Then one day, we met up with Captain Nicholas Cramm; more correctly retired Captain Cramm. Seems his share of the prize money from the Bulgar, was enough that he felt comfortable retiring at the early age of forty five. He said he felt sorry for us and invited us to come home with him. Well, at first we weren't so sure about even talking to him, but no one else would pay the least attention to us and we did need a place to get out of that incessant cold wind. So we went home with him.
His wife Juliana Von Schishenberg-Cramm, was lean and horse faced, but kind to us and fed us the first decent meal we had since we were marooned on Blackstar. We slept in warm beds that night and were thankful for it. The next day Ex-Captain Cramm told us that his brother-in-law was leaving shortly for Fabia aboard a container ship of miscellaneous cargo. This ship, the Phoenician, needed two experienced space hands and he would see if he could get us aboard."
"What about the Spacer's Guild licenses?" I asked. "You would need some identity documents for those. Then there would be passports and visas and all that bureaucratic nonsense. How did you obtain them?"
"Our good friend Captain Cramm had the whole situation in hand and assured us that false identity documents could be gotten from a friend of his with little or no problem. The next morning he took our retina and finger prints, photos and measurements. By that evening he had all the necessary documents ready to go. These were beauties and would pass all but the most exhaustive of examinations. For me there was a identity disk giving my rating as Spaceman First Class, and for B.J. a disk rating him as Journeyman Cargo Handler."
"What about Bruce's missing left hand? What kind of a cargo handler would he be with only one hand?"
"Captain Cramm took care of that problem also. While we were waiting for the I.D. disks to be made, we stopped at a medical scrap yard and the good Captain ordered a prostronic hand for B.J. Ironically it was made from the left arm of a Guardian robot. I wondered if it had come from one of the two we had brought with us aboard the Bulgar."
"A robot's left arm?" I was sort of shocked, I expected better from a first class big city like Tekoa. "Was that the best that could be done?"
"It fit and it worked; B.J. had been two years without a hand and was thankful to get that. Sure it was only a piece of scrap from an old robot, but it was a working hand. Even so, Captain Cramm had paid for it out of his own pocket. Or so it seemed at the time. Two days later we left aboard a shuttle for the container ship, Phoenician."
"There was no trouble with the I.D. disks, then?"
"They passed us through like they were glad to see our backsides, and I think they were. Since then I have come to the conclusion that the whole thing with Captain Cramm was not so much charity as it was the Ameron Government relieving itself of a knotty problem. They couldn't let us die on the streets but they could take no official notice of us either. Quite a quandary. So they helped us to escape, so to speak. Once we were on board the container ship, we were out of their jurisdiction and out of their hair."
"So what kind of duty did you draw aboard the Phoenician?"
"Easy duty for the most part. The old Phoenician was one of those really long container ships; the kind they used to call Space Trains. It was a soft ship, that is a ship with no outer hull. The crew compartment and command bridge were located in a one hundred foot diameter sphere, attached to a rectangular box containing the matter converter and drive units. This in turn was attached by means of an umbilical to the tender which contained the material which was to be fed to the matter converter.
The cargo area consisted of a series of containers, each of which had its own environmental system. One of my jobs was to patrol the ship, which was over four kilometers long (looked like a segmented worm), checking each container to insure that the environmental systems, for each container were maintaining the cargo at the preset levels. As you might imagine it wasn't too strenuous a duty. During our off hours we played cards, and watched recordings of old tri-vid shows and movies. All together it was a good time while it lasted.
Then one evening, in the dim light of the sleeping chamber, I laid my head down on my bunk, looking forward to a good night's sleep. I had no sooner put my head down than I realized I had put it into something that should not be there. It was soft and sticky and smelt very foul. Without even turning on the light I knew what it was: Gleet shit! I had laid my head right down in it! Gleet shit! Smelly yellow green Gleet Shit! Oh I was angry, but fear was like a ball of ice in my stomach. What would happen now. The Gleets were back on our trail. I had hoped that the Gleets would leave us alone now that they had destroyed our hope of riches.
In that instant I heard B.J. crying out. I expected a stream of curses but heard only the initial 'Shit' then he began to sob. I wasn't surprised that he was cracking up. I felt very close to it myself."
"Did anyone else on board see the Gleet?"
"Yah, the little yellow, green bastard ran through the crew's mess just as the captain was sitting down to dinner. He jumped up on the table and kicked the captain's steaming hot, clam chowder right into the captain's lap. He upset the spaghetti bowl on the first officer's head, and pinned the boson's ear to the bulkhead with an expertly thrown bread knife, snatched from the table as he ran past. He careened out the door leaving the on duty crew paralyzed with shock, and no one saw him after that."
"How did you explain that to the Captain?"
"There was no way we could explain it so we didn't try. No one on board knew that we had former dealings with Gleets, and we weren't about to volunteer that information. Besides everyone forgot about it any way in the ensuing crisis.
The old Phoenician was a junk burner, her matter converter had powered an Imperial cruiser of the Demon class over a hundred years earlier. They built them to last in those days, but nothing lasts forever. The "D" rings shorted across and this caused a general failure of the MC control unit. You should'a seen the buss bars in that old control unit; they were twenty centimeters thick, solid copper. They melted like butter on a hot day. We thought that the meltdown of the buss bars would short the system out and stop the matter conversion process, but the molten bars ran onto the floor and shorted the whole system through the metal hull members. The whole hull was hot and every instrument on board either shorted or burned out in seconds. With the control unit out of operation the matter converter went crazy and began pumping out power far beyond its designed capacity. We were scared to touch anything; several of the crew were shocked senseless, by coming into contact with metal portions of the hull or control units. The drives began to howl and the whole ship went crazy. The emergency couplings shorted out and the Phoenician dropped its tow. Over two kilometers of linked cargo containers were now free falling free through space. It was like a train with a runaway engine.
Freed of all that mass the old ship leaped forward like a stag. The acceleration was so violent that the inertial gravity field failed to completely compensate and we were violently thrown against the rear walls. The Hyperdrive Flicker Calibration Unit disappeared in a flash of blue fire and smoke. The Phoenician dropped out of Hyperspace into normal space time. Its uncontrollable acceleration soon pushed the old tug well over its maxim design speed, the hull began to creak and moan, loudly enough to be heard over the screams of the drive units. It was a nightmare; the ship was beyond control and accelerating at an unknown rate. The hull was beginning to flex and twist under the stress.
B.J. screamed at me to run for the space suit lockers. His normal voice was strangely low and distorted. I was horrified to realize that we were beginning to suffer the effects of approaching the speed of light in normal space time. Every thing in sight seemed to be twisting and elongating along the axis of the ship. It was the Einstein effect; time was slowing for us and everything was moving in slow motion. Running for the space suit lockers was like running in a nightmare, I was straining with all my might, but felt like a fly in amber. It seemed to take years to get across the room to the lockers, perhaps it did take years. Somewhere, sometime the drives burnt up; they went like dominos, one at a time, leaving us drifting through normal space at a rate of speed somewhere just under light speed. We had no way of telling how fast we were going. Every sensor and instrument on the ship was destroyed. B.J. and I suited up and closed our helmets. Every move was like slow motion and all speech sounded like a slow base. The very matter of the ship seemed unstable, shifting constantly. B.J. and I were the only ones left alive. The rest of the crew was either dead or so changed that we counted them as dead."
"What do you mean, 'changed'? If they weren't dead what were they?"
"Just changed! Dammit, I don't like to think about it. I still see some of them in my nightmares."
"I don't mean to upset you, but this really requires more explanation."
"No other human beings have traveled this close to the speed of light in normal space and lived to tell of it. Time and matter get all confused near light speed. Solid objects become gelatinous and sometimes flow like water. We found the chief engineer in the drive chamber. Somehow he had fallen into one of the gravetic drive units, he and the drive seemed to be occupying the same space at the same time. He was all mixed up in the machinery; hands, feet and legs protruding from the unbroken cassette of the drive unit. It would have been bad enough had he been dead, but his hands and feet were still moving as if he were trying to get free of the drive unit. I took his hand to pull him free, but the drive was as solid as he. I couldn't budge him. It took nearly all my strength to remove his grip from my hand. We left him kicking and grasping, still sticking in the drive unit.
Others of the crew had just disappeared, no trace of them at all. Perhaps they fell through the walls or floor. As far as the rest of the crew is concerned we found things, that might have been their remains, or might not have. Everything in that ship was all distorted and crazy, nothing made sense and even the simple laws of nature seemed as if they were unsure of themselves. Whole sections of the ship would seem to disappear and reappear in different places. Strangers, both human and alien seemed to wander through the ship like ghosts, pale and unsubstantial. Perhaps they saw the ship as it was years ago before it was scrapped and segments converted into a tug. It seemed as if we were in that state for many years though I know we never ate, slept, or relived ourselves. We wore our space suits all during that time, never removing them, though we did open the visors so we could talk to one another, the micro wave transmissions from the helmet communicators seemed too slow to be tolerated.
"So how long did this state of affairs last?"
"I can't answer that. I have no way to measure that time. It might have been a few minutes or centuries. I only know that we lost eight years somewhere in that distortion in time. We did what we could to repair the ship but the state of being which we then existed in, seemed frustrate any meaningful attempts at simple mechanical repair. We might have been there forever except that we were relatively close to the gravity well of a White Dwarf Star. When we became aware of this state of affairs we were somewhat concerned that falling toward the star would have the effect of speeding us up and forcing us into a near timeless situation, or perhaps it would warp our course so violently that we would be subjected to forces beyond the ability of the inertial gravity compensator, and be smashed to a one atom thick jelly layer on the walls of the hull.
"What, you were only - somewhat concerned? This sounds like a life or death situation to me. You were only SLIGHTLY CONCERNED?"
"In that near light-speed, state of being, with time flowing all about you; like sitting on a rock in the middle of a fast flowing stream, you watch the water rush past you but, it doesn't mean much; so it was with us, even thought seemed slowed way down to us and the concept of death, seemed like some sort of abstract, it just didn't have much meaning. I think we were slightly mad. It is the mind's defense, when confronted by things so far out of your experience, that you don't even have words to tell them to some one else. I'm afraid that is as close as I can come to explaining.
However, as it happened, the gravity well of the star must have speeded us up some; how much I cannot tell. We fell past that dwarf star in what seemed like seconds. The Star's surface still glowed white hot, but the intense gravity field of the collapsed star had polished its surface smoother than a billiard ball. I suppose we must have fallen through all kinds of hard radiation fields, but such was our speed that there seemed to be no apparent effect. The gravity well warped our course ever so slightly, but it was enough to send shock waves bouncing all across the gravetic spectrum, and resulted in an enormous and unnatural gravitational anomaly. Had it been noise it would have been like a colossal explosion. As it was this colossal gravetic ripple was felt by sensors over two hundred parsecs away.
A Fabian research vessel (more correctly a spy ship) called Strena was first on the scene to investigate. Soon they had matched our course, but they were in hyperspace and we were still in normal space, moving just under the speed of light. The Strena's captain, Angel Pflugmacher, was a bold and resourceful man. He under took our rescue by firing tractor beams at us. They were unable to hold us for long but each time the locked on, the our careening wreck was slowed a bit more. I was told that it took four days, before the Strena slowed us down enough to match course and speed with us in normal space. All this seemed to take very little time to us. And when the Fabian marines came aboard, we seemed to be almost catatonic to them. To us it seemed that they were moving about with unbelievable speed. They took us on board the Strena; then they blew the wreck of the Phoenician to bits with torpedoes. After that I don't remember very much of the time we spent on that Fabian spy ship. The ship's doctor kept us both so full of drugs that we could do little more than lay comatose in our chairs as they questioned, poked and prodded us."
"Why were they so interested in your health?"
"The Fabians, like all dictatorships are always interested in anything to do with time and prolonging life. You see it became very obvious that we were victims of time compression, caused by the near light speed velocities we were traveling at. We had lost eight years but had only aged a few hours. Aside from a lingering disorientation, which I think was caused as much by the drugs that Quack doctor was giving us, we were little or no worse for the wear. We had surveyed when every other experiment with near light velocities had resulted in fatalities. Perhaps they thought there was something to be learned from us, but they were sadly mistaken."
"You could tell them nothing helpful? I would think that just the medical data itself would be of incalculable value."
"Perhaps it would have been if they could have cut us up like lab rats for study. They were bound for one of the Fabian worlds where they had some kind of super secret research facility, but they never made it."
"Gleet troubles again?"
"Yah, the little yellow bellied leaf chomper paid us a visit in the brig of the Strena. We were in sort of a padded cell strapped to tables with all kinds of tubes stuck in us. One tube to feed us, one tube for eliminating, one tube to keep us breathing, one tube for the drugs that dripped into our arms all day long and kept us so calm and peaceful, and a whole lot of other tubes, god only knows what they were for. So the Gleet found us drugged out of our minds and strapped to a table, but even at that, I knew when I saw his ugly little face at the barred window, that nothing was stop me from tearing his peanut shaped head off his loathsome little body and stuffing it where the sun don't shine. Unfortunately the straps were really strong I couldn't budge them.. I tried to tell the guard, but he wouldn't listen. After that it was too much trouble to try to make myself understood, so I fell back asleep, it was all too much trouble anyway. Let them find out about Gleets themselves."
"I trust they did learn, no doubt."
"Oh they learned all right. The little yellow eyed bastard set fire to the drive room, and in the resulting confusion trashed their weapon fire control system, the navigational controls and drove the ship's computer crazy with some sort of insolvable math problem. He then proceeded to send off some sort of a distress message via the subspace long wave communicator, before he fused the communications system into a molten blob."
"I gather someone answered the distress call?"
"You could put it that way. Very shortly there after an Eli raider hove alongside and put a laser blast through the command bridge. The Strena, being in no shape to fight back was taken easily. Captain Pflugmacher made the mistake of assuming that just because it was an Eli ship that there was no danger. The Fabians often have dealings with the Eli, but the Eli are individuals to the last. This particular Eli Wazil (Warleader) Secva Shadel, by name, was more concerned about piracy and finding the great treasure that he had been assured, B.J. and I knew the location of. Captain Pflugmacher made such complaints about his ship being taken and his crew consigned to slavery that old Wazil Shadel, had him spaced!"
"You mean they put him out the airlock with no suit?"
"The Eli like to do that sort of thing to prisoners. It makes the rest of them very tractable. B.J. and I were very tractable. We were still so drugged up that we could hardly move. The Fabian Doctor was quick to identify himself to the Wazil and told him that if he were allowed to access his medical supplies and tools he could pry the truth (i.e. the location of the treasure) out of us in no time. None of the prisoners knew anything about any treasure, but no one was about to contradict the Wazil. When the Wazil found out that the doctor was the one responsible for our semi-comatose condition, He got really angry and had the Doctor spaced also."
"So how did you become aware of all this? You said you and Lieutenant Vorhees were drugged."
"We were drugged but we could hear everything, though it was very difficult to do anything. Also there was a human-Eli half-breed woman with the Eli Pirate crew and she was doing all the translating because none of the Eli could speak basic. She filled us in on a lot of things we didn't know about, like the Wazil's name, Secva Shadel, She mentioned this several times to us as if we should be very impressed and honored to have been pirated by Secva Shadel, himself. Well I tell you, it meant nothing to B.J. and I, but we didn't say so."
"So what happened to the Fabian ship?"
"The Eli took what ever they wanted and set the self destruct mechanisms. It was blown to microscopic fragments by the resulting power bank explosion. The crew were bound for slavery on some backwater Eli world, or perhaps would be sold to the Ralnai, or who knows what other race might be looking for some humans to conduct medical experimentation on. B.J. and I were given best of treatment. We were confined in the Wazil's private quarters, and even allowed onto the Command Bridge under guard. They were being very nice, in a sort of threating way, because they wanted us to tell them where the treasure was. Unfortunately neither B.J. or I could possibly guess what the treasure was or why they thought we knew were it was. It was a very sticky situation.
The half -breed girl, she turned out to be the old Wasil's daughter and the only woman aboard ship. They had to have her along, she was the only one who could speak high Eli and basic. She tried to weasel out the secret of the treasure by using her sexual wiles on us. She soon found out that poor B.J. could not be reached in that manner; it only made him frustrated and angry. So she worked very hard on me. She was randy as a monkey, and so we played at I'll tell you if you tell me."
"So what did you tell her? Where did they ever get the idea you and B.J. knew where there was any sort of treasure?"
"My problem exactly; so I made veiled references to vast fortunes hidden in space, while pumping her for information concerning how they got the idea B.J. and I had any special knowledge of anything. Of course I daren't even hint that we knew nothing, we had already seen two people spaced for angering the old Wasil. So while Shalla Shadel, for that was her name, and I were playing at creating new and interesting erotic variations, we were also pumping each other for any scrap of information. I turned out that the Wasil had been contacted by some sort of space demi-god called a Fakrell. The Eli are often a very superstitious race. I asked her to tell me more of this powerful creature, and how they contacted her father. When I found out the demi-god had used the subspace communicator to contact the Eli, I asked if Shalla had ever seen one of these creatures. She said that very few had seen one and lived to tell of it; but that they were reputed to be small yellow- green, smooth skinned, and with large yellow eyes. They had three digits with sucker tips on each hand and their feet were the same.
Well, She had described a Gleet, and when I knew that the Gleet been the source of the story about the treasure, I knew we were in trouble. I just didn't know what to do. Escape didn't look possible, and I was sure that the Wasil would have us spaced the minute I told him the location of any treasure. But I had to tell Shalla something, the old man was getting impatient. Shalla said that she believed that her father was going space B.J. if I didn't come up with something soon."
"So what did you do?"
The old Sandminer ran his hand through his thinning hair, shaking out a cloud of dust in the process, "B.J. and I decided that we had to give them something so they would believe us, then promise them more after they let down on some human inhabited planet and turned us loose. The only thing we could think of, was the cargo of the Phoenician. You remember it was a star train and when all hell broke loose aboard the old tug, she lost her tow. The cargo containers would have continued on their same course, in normal space. Even accounting for eight years they couldn't have drifted far. Well not far in interstellar terms. Not far enough so that we couldn't calculate the course from our knowledge of the ship's position. So we calculated the course and I gave it to Shalla. The old Eli ordered the ship to come about, and set course for the last known position of the Phoenician, before she ran away.
Well that Eli ship was a fast bugger, it only took about 26 hours to reach the target area and begin the search. The sensors began picking up cargo compartments drifting all over that area. We thought the star train would be all in one piece, but it seems that the Phoenician didn't loose all the compartments at once they came off piecemeal as the ship accredited, scattering the cargo compartments all over the sector. The Old Eli Captain had us dragged into the control room. He wanted to know which compartments contained the most valuable cargo. It seems that the first compartment they had over hauled, boarded and opened had contained 2000 cases of frozen fruitsicles. They were in perfect condition, and very tasty, the old pirate said, holding up a popsicle stick as evidence that he had just finished one. Unfortunately frozen fruitsicles were not quite what he had in mind as treasure. He wanted a copy of the manifest, and if we didn't produce one we should be prepared to see how long we could hold our breath in hard vacuum. There had been just over 300 compartments in the Phoenician tow and B.J. and I had never even inquired as to what might be in them. We just didn't know what to say. The old man ordered the inner air lock door opened and they threw us into the air lock."
"What about the girl, didn't she beg for your life?"
"Hardly; that cast iron bitch, was translating all her father's threats, and all she said to me was, 'Sorry, it was fun while it lasted, but I would had to shoot you sooner or later, when I tired of you. By now!', and she closed the inner lock door herself."
"This sounds very serious. Were they just trying to get more out of you? How did you get out of that one?"
"Oh it was serious, all right! Through the little port in the lock door we watched Shalla punch the button that opened the outer door of the air lock. B.J. and I were sure we our luck (such as it had been) had run right out. But when the half-breed girl pushed the open button on the lock controls nothing happened. The Eli all stood there looking puzzled at each other, and scratching their butts. We were beyond terror; so frightened that we could hardly comprehend that we still lived. Then the inner door opened and we tumbled through, into the ship."
"What about the Eli? Did they just stand there? Had they never experienced a minor malfunction before?"
"As a matter of fact, nothing on that ship had ever failed, not for twelve thousand years."
"What?" I just didn't think I believed this story, but up to this point, this yarn had been very entertaining and sort of believable. Now this crazy old Sandminer was telling me that the Eli ship was over twelve thousand years old. I shook my head in disbelief.
"I know," he said, with a shrug, "...it sounds weird but its true. The Eli, all of the crew who had crowded into the command bridge to watch us spaced, were all lying flat on their bellies, shaking with terror. There standing before them was a woman in armor. She was the most awesome sight I have ever seen. The armor was fluted, of silvery metal and blazed like fire, scintillating with rainbow flashes as she moved. She was unbelievably, breath takingly, beautiful, but she radiated power and majesty. Her very presence was overwhelming. She was haranguing the quaking Wasil in old high Eli, and his half breed daughter was squirming on the floor as she translated into the Eli common tounge. We had no idea of what she was saying, but it was enough for us to see the terror she inspired in the hardened old Eli Captain. Then she paused and turned to us, removing her blazing, winged helmet. As she shook down her long raven hair, I saw that this was indeed the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was beyond description. From her high cheek bones, and her soft green eyes, to her pointed little ears, she was all Eli, but ever so much more. No woman ever moved with such grace and majesty. Her voice crying out to the Eli was cold as breaking ice, yet when she spoke to B.J. and I, it was warm and sweet as a mother's kiss."
"She spoke to you? How could you understand High Eli?"
"Oh, she spoke to us, and it was like the sun breaking through a cloudy day. She spoke and it warmed our fear frozen hearts. She spoke in the very best Basic English, or so it seemed. I'll never forget what she said, 'I am Sharr, Maid of War of the Shadel. I am also the ship, Sharr Shadel. As you earthlings measure time, it was twelve thousand years ago that I came into being. Sharr of the Shadel was one of the greatest war leaders of the High Eli, when they fought the Chronos Wizards. It was the custom in those days, to imprint the personality of a great man or woman upon the unformed mental matrix of every new starship. Now I serve the degraded remnants of my people. They get stupider every generation. Therefore I must, from time to time, do what I must to keep them out of trouble which I might not be able to handle. Secva is a fool but he is my fool -- my descendant, 97 my Captain. But I will not let him commit such a foolish act as to harm those who have been touched by the Fac-Reil'. I have spoken to the Wazil and his crew. They have been shown wisdom, and have agreed that you are to be treated with respect until you can be returned to a human occupied world.'"
"She was the ship's computer?"
"That and more. She was the ship, and not at all incapable of overriding the Captain's commands, if she thought better."
"Was she then, an immortal?"
"I asked that same question and she replied that there had once been several thousand ships like herself, but over the centuries the great majority had been lost in the vastness of the universe, or destroyed in combat. 'Even the humans and the reptile people, the Ralnai, have weapons that could end my existence, were I to carelessly allow it.' She was built to last forever; self repairing and sentient, but not immortal."
"So She was a holographic projection?"
"More than that; She existed in your mind. She seemed every bit as real as any woman could, but it was only your mind that saw, heard, or touched her. She had the wisdom of twelve thousand years, and yet she was a machine, a soulless machine. Yet, she was so much more than any machine. She had feelings and passions as real as any woman. She felt sorry for B.J. and I. I think she knew how the Gleet had tortured us. During the rest of the time we spent on board that Eli raider, she visited with me several times, and made me feel that she was genuinely concerned for our welfare. I still see her sometimes in my dreams."
He paused for a few moments, gazing into the bottom of his glass. "I wonder if falling in love with a woman, twelve thousand years dead was part of the Gleet's vengeance?"
I had to get him going again, so I asked, "What happened then?"
"Well they threw us out of the ship on Starsend - this very world. We were two days wandering over the desert before Harry, the cabby, found us. He was hauling Tridex and detonators out to the Pair-a-dice mine. He gave us the option to ride on the cargo or wait until he came back that way tomorrow. Well, we would have ridden in a cage full of Valgorian pit vipers rather than spend another day out there on the sand. So we rode to Pair-a-dice with Harry."
"Isn't that illegal?"
"What?"
"Hauling explosives and detonators in the same load."
"Well it would be on any planet where they have laws, but on this world the only laws are those people care to enforce. Nobody cares if Harry wants to save a trip and carries both the explosives and the detonators in the same load. After all the probability is that he will only blow himself up.
The next day Harry took us to Skysend City. It wasn't near the town it is now, in those days; just a few run down buildings and the mining company office. We were broke again and had to find work. Fortunately the mining company was hiring; they needed Sandminers to take over operation of a Class 12 Sandmine called the Ouroburos. Seems raiders had hit it a few weeks ago - killed all the crew and stole the amcrys."
"So that's how you became a Sandminer."
"We thought we had finally sunk as low as possible. Every body knows there is no form of life lower than a Sandminer! We really knew just how low when we got out to the Ouroboros. The desiccated bodies of her former crew still lay where they were killed. We gave them a Sandminer's burial; threw them off the back deck as the old Ouri ground along. They lay where they fell, covered with the dust of our passing. That's a Sandminer's funeral.
So the Ouriburos burrowed through the sands. We slaved in the dust and heat. Three years slipped by, and we began to think, that perhaps the Gleets had forgotten us. But it was a forlorn hope.
A Sandmine has a laser guidance system which steers it through the dunes. The sighting mechanism consists of a large telescope mounted in the control cab, which sits on a cantilevered nose high over the main augers and sand intake. This is the least dusty part of the Sandmine. The laser is sighted onto a reflector placed out on the desert and the Sandmine grinds onward at four miles per hour. The laser keeps the mine on course.
The day came when I was sighting the laser through the big scope in the cab. B. J. was leaning on the railing right at the nose of the Sandmine staring down into the churning sand as the augers chewed through the dunes. I looked out through the scope and there leaning on the reflector tower was a Gleet. As I stared through the scope he put both hands in his mouth, pulled his lips to the sides and wiggled his tongue at me. Just then I heard B.J. scream. I jerked away from the scope and saw the railing snap like rotten wood. B.J. tried to save himself but the railing came away in his hand and he toppled over into the churning sand.
A Sandminer is slow but heavy and hard to stop. I jammed the engines into reverse, and applied the brakes, but the Ouri ran a full half mile before she shuddered to a stop. When the rest of the crew found out why I had pulled the emergency stop, the cursed me roundly. No one could be sucked into the augers and survive. It was a waste of time to stop and look for a minced corpse. Nevertheless we were stopped and we would look for B.J. Anyone who cared to argue could argue with my pistols. Since there was no one there who wanted to draw down on me the crew dismounted and searched.
All we found was a blood soaked ball of sand. B.J. had lost both arms and both legs and had been blinded."
"You mean he survived?" I was astonished.
"Yes, there is a screen in the upper part of the intake to sort out the occasional rock mixed in with the sand. The augers took off his arms and legs, but the sand packed the wounds, preventing him from bleeding to death. The screen sorted him out just like a rock and dumped him out the portside rock chute. When we found him I put what was left into a sack. We hoisted out my jet bike and I rode like hell for Skysend City.
Fortunately old Doc Quack was in and reasonably sober. When he saw what was left of B.J. he sobered up pretty quickly. He called for the medibot and a garden hose, then he threw me out.
It was six weeks before I could make it back into town to check up on poor old B.J. They never did get all the sand out and he was a mess of lumps and scar tissue. The Doc was amazed that B.J. had lived at all. Doc Quack and Jack Shackel the local Bot mech had fitted B.J. out with the opticals from a Guardian robot, so B.J. could see. I visited with him for a short time, paid the doctor bill and left for the Sandmine."
"Closing time, gentlemen." the bartender said. "Please tell B.J. its time to go to work. I'm going out the back, he'll have to lock up after he finishes sweeping. "
"I'll give you a ride back to Easy Annie's. Let's go."
I wanted to hear the rest of the story, so I said, "Where's B.J. now? " I followed the Sandminer to the door, where he pulled his pistol and tapped the old bucket head standing by the door. "Here?" I asked.
"Come on, B.J. Time to go to work." He tapped the bucket head harder and suddenly the lights went on in its opticals.
"Hi Ben, how ya been?" it said. Its joints creaked as it slowly turned.
"Been fine, B.J. How are you?"
"Getting along. Haven't seen any Gleets lately have ya?"
"I should hope not. Keep well I gotta go." I followed the old Sandminer out to his jet bike. Ansel, the cambot followed faithfully keeping both of us on camera. The third lens he focused on the old bucket head as it creaked into the Blue Star and took up a broom.
Old Ben's jet bike was a sleek Empire model. Its peeling gray coat of paint did little to hide the original Imperial markings and a couple of nasty looking laser burns. "Get on,"....he said, "I'll go slow enough so your cambot can keep up with us."
"So that's B.J.? That old bucket head?"
"Well he wouldn't die, so there was nothing else to do for him. Old Doc Quack and the Botmech fitted him up with the body of an old Guardian type out of the scrap heap."
"Did he go back to Sandmining?" I seated myself behind the old Sandminer, not knowing what to expect.
"No, the rest of 'em wouldn't have him; said he was a jinx, a Jonah-- bad luck." He gently lifted off and moved the bike at a fast walking pace toward Easy Annie's. Ansel easily kept up, filming all the while. "Sweeping up and being a cigar store Indian during the day was the only work he could get; no one else would hire him. But Big Bill Buller, the owner of the Blue Star, is notorious for buckin' the odds, and going against superstician."
"What ah ya doin', stealing my fares? " Harry the wild haired cabby drove up in his battered old grav truck, its turbines whining and stuttering.
"Looks like you're too busy tonight to do taxi services anyway." said the old Sandminer. "Still carrying the detonators and Tridex in the same load, I see. "
"So what! You don't have a taxi license. You're stealing my fares!" The cabby cast a glance at me. "Ya want a ride?"
"In that? With that?" I wasn't about to ride in that potential bomb.
"Well, in that case I gotta be on me way." Harry leaned back in the seat and used his foot to jam the throttles to full. The right turbine coughed and stuttered. He reached behind the seat and out came the big wrench. "Go, (whack) Go ye filthy piece o' mechanical crap!" He hammered on the turbine casing. The turbine coughed and blasted a great gout of flame. Suddenly the grav truck leaped forward and began to climb at a steep angle. The Cabby repeated his performance of this morning, and fell over the roll bar into the back. This time there was no Ansel to catch him, and he fell right out of the truck and landed on his back in the dusty road. The truck spiraled up in a crazy climb.
"I didn't think those things could go much over ten feet high." I was amazed that the old truck could climb like that. It's turbine casings glowed red hot, and the banshee scream of the runaway turbines was bringing people out into the streets.
"I didn't think the old Phoenician could approach the speed of light, either, but she did." The old Sandminer stared up at the unbelievable sight. Suddenly the truck seemed to reach the apex of it's climb, it rolled over and plunged straight down through the roof of the Blue Star. There was a small pop and a flash of fire as one of the detonators went