Here's the first submission for this round. Enjoy.

Hijacked

by Hazen Wardle

The girl was an assassin.
I can clearly see that now, looking back. You know what they say about hind-sight.
I'll tell you about it but I need to give you some background.

It is a time of both prosperity and misfortune. Multiple forms of energy have been tapped into in the
past decade and a half, each generational change scaling with such speed as to make Moore's Law
seem child's play. Energy generators and power plants that once took up many acres could now fit in
the average home. Internal combustion engines, now nearly obsolete, could run for days on anything,
exhausting very few harmful gasses.
I'm the head of a huge conglomerate of start-up energy firms, literally hundreds of small-time energy
producers banded together to take on the big-guy. It was a long road to the top but once we got our act
together we were larger than big guys, overnight.

They needed a brilliant mind.
They got me.
I'm better than brilliant.
Which is why I should have seen it coming.

The shindig had been planned for months, many of us meeting in the skybooth at the world multi-ball
championship game. I arrived in my custom air-ship; a dirigible, yes, but the fastest form of air travel
available, and the safest for me. A dirigible, you say? Yes. But not one of those clumsy, slow moving
behemoths of the early 20th century filled with deadly hydrogen gas.
This sucker is small, sleek, and fast, nearly zero drag, and coupled with the variable-antigrav generator
this baby can move. There are much smaller units available, but they have limited range and with the
open cockpit and jet engine right below the seat, I'd rather not. I do have a classic Harley, and when I
want to risk my life I take to the streets and the open road on that thing.

So anyway, I'm in my usual booth-another mistake on my part. I'm watching the game from the top of
the stadium. Really, I don't know why I bother going at all. I have a much better view of things on the
massive wall screen. Really I could just watch from home without all the hubbub. Perhaps it’s the
whole ‘being a businessman’ thing. Gotta make a good showing, I guess.
So anyway, I'm watching the players throw the balls around and trying score, hoping my team wins
(yes, my team. I own one of the three down on the field). Halftime rolls around and the festivities flow
out onto the play field.
Next thing I know the klaxons are blaring, people are running and panicking and explosions are
rocking the joint.

Suddenly she bursts in through the back door and hauls me out, just as if she had been my bodyguard
for years. "Quickly sir, right this way."
Blindly I followed; perhaps it was the explosions that blinded me, I don't know, but I followed her
anyway.
She was slim and dressed all in black, her outfit obviously leathlar--leather kevlar. Her many visible
weapons and lack of full body coverage screamed arrogance in her style, not worried about taking a
bullet or an mFrag. Her features were slightly Oriental--Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese? I couldn't tell,
maybe even one of the Japanese Yakuza splinter factions.

The window blows inward and instantly we are covered in a shower of tempered glass shards.

Leathlar has nothing on this stuff. Micro-fibre threads of neocabrisnite is inter-woven into the very

fabric of my suit. It moves and breaths like a dream, you don't even know it's there, no one does--you
can't see it if used correctly. I should have been more cautious and worn face and hand protection as
well, but then again, hind-sight. As I said, the stuff is nearly invisible, but feels funny on your face. I
guess that is why I don't like it; I don't like things on my face.
With the storm of glass coming my way I dive through the door and come through nearly unscathed,
but I won't realize until later my face was grazed.
The girl hurriedly helps me to my feet and prods me forward. 'Run! I'm right behind you!' she yells,
taking aim at some unknown enemy charging in through window.
The emergency exit normally at the far end of the hallway is missing; only a huge gaping hole remains.
It was my only hope of escape from whatever this was. I come to a dead stop at the hole in the wall and
survey the damage. The exit stairs lay in a twisted pile of wreckage hundreds of feet below. I'm stuck,
and glance back over my shoulder just in time to see the girl coming right at me. I catch a flying kick to
the chest and I am flung backwards through the hole, falling down and down and...

...And that's all I remember when I woke up.
She's standing over me; one of those huge guns pointed right at my unprotected head. As I glance
around quickly--a concession she willing gives me--I realize I am in some sort of craft, an airship not
unlike my own. In fact, the more I think about it, I realize it is mine. She must have hijacked it from my
crew and enabled the cloaking device.

'Yes, it's the Pony Express,' she sneered as she repeated the name of my airship, answering my unasked
question. 'Now, there are two ways off of this ship. I've been sent to kill you, but if you cooperate with
me perhaps that eventuality can be avoided...'

I apologize for not updating for a while. Things got crazy for a bit. Round 4 is done and there is a poll up. Vote for one of the 2 submissions. There is also a new image up for round 5, so get your thinking caps on and start writing.

Second submission for round 4.

VX2

By Hazen Wardle

Thankfully this barren rock has a breathable atmosphere. My life pack only contained a very limited
amount of clean air. The oxygen-converter in my suit could have supplied me with air for years, but it
was damaged when I got hit. Additionally, food will be a problem in a few hours.

I shouldn’t have even been here. Though the VX2 is a new ship and I have only logged a few quick
simulator hours, I am a veteran pilot. I can fly anything. Give me a barn, and I’ll fly it. I’m that good.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about the idiots in my squad. We were on a scouting mission, primarily. This
system consists of only five planets orbiting star HD45634 in the constellation Canis Major. We are on
our way through the area and decided to stop in for a look. It had been known for centuries this star
had at least two planets, and our own deep space scans revealed three additional planets, one in the
habitable zone.

“We’re half a light year from the SSS Nosugref. Admiral Meeker won’t know a thing.” That was the only
thing Downie had to say—the other two guys in the squad follow him like lemmings; I don’t even know if
they can talk! (But that is another story in itself)

None of the planets were worth much, and this is the only one with any sort of worthwhile atmosphere
to speak of—I suppose we could send in a team of mining engineers, but we all know it would end up
being run by poor people forced into slavery by some big power-hungry multi-national conglomerate.

Anyway, Downie and the guys decided it would be fun to see if their VX2’s could reach light-speed while
in orbit. Well, ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little here. But they did want to race around this rock at top
speed. “Look at me! Look at me! Right turns only!” Downie yelled as he laid down the laps between the
planet and its asteroid of a moon.

So I’m holding orbit at 250k watching the idiots make fools of themselves. The three of them were
making me dizzy, but that’s not the reason why I’m stuck here. Yeah, yeah. I’m getting to it.

The guys got tired after something like a fifty or a hundred laps so they get this bright idea to buzz me.
They get into the classical delta formation and zoom right past me. The problem is, they seem to have
forgotten we were in space. Yeah, shock-waves and the like don’t form in a vacuum, so, like the moron’s
they are, they simply sped right past me.

Their trajectory was alarmingly close to the upper atmosphere, and they were nowhere ready to
land. All three of them actually dipped into the mesosphere, and I could see the plasma trails burning
behind them as they arced over the planet, disappearing from sight as they curved down and around the
backside.

I waited only just a few moments before I moved from my orbit, only then because they did not return.
They were on a very steep decent and it is very likely they were all caught in the planets gravity well.
Additionally, I could not raise them on the comm.

Time to go to rescue.

I eased on around the planet, sensors in all spectrums sweeping back and forth. I broke a sweat, and
that’s not typical of me. Believe me, on any other day I could care less if these idiots offed themselves
with one of their stunts. But in this current situation I needed them as much as they needed me. We
were a team, at least until we return to the SSS Nosugref—at which time I am seriously considering
asking for a transfer. I need to get with a squad that I matter to, a squad that cares more about the job
at hand than about horsing around.

As I am working my way around the planet I listen for any distress signals on the comm, but I hear
nothing. I scan the whole band and—

—an eye-searing flash of light and I suddenly find myself falling toward the planet. Something has hit
me, but I don’t have time to think about what. I’m in a flat spin and my controls only partially respond.
My reactions are automatic—as I said before, I’ve spent many hours in the sims, for this and other craft.
I manage to reduce the spin but I know I’m going down, that can’t be helped at this point. I launch a
distress probe at the last minute and ride it out as long as I dare. There is no way this bird will ever land
safely, so my only option is to eject.

At ten-thousand feet I pull the handle. The canopy ejects—two hundred years since the first jet
airplanes and they are still using ejection seats and detachable canopies—I can’t do anything about that
right now, but believe me, I do have some ideas on improvement.

The chute pops and I am jerked up and away from the derelict craft. I reach for the control handles and
angle toward the falling VX2. I am able to see the extent of the damage now. One wing is completely
missing and the other has a nice, round hole in the middle of it. It drops away and crashes, a smoky,
billowing cloud blooms a mile below me. I angle away from it knowing there would be nothing
salvageable.

I survey the landscape as I glide down, and I see no sign of the others. I am on my own.

Once I have landed all I can do now is wait. Hopefully my probe reaches the ship soon; I’d rather not be
stranded here any longer than necessary, and with those holes in what was my wings— something put
them there. This planet was presumed uninhabited, so I hope I am found by my people and not by the
natives. This whole situation could have been avoided.

So here I sit, waiting on someone.

I hear the comm in my helmet, and before I can pick it up I hear a ship descending in the background. I
look and realize today is not my lucky day. We were supposed to be alone out here in this sector. Turns
out we were wrong.

That is not an SSS Ship.

That’s the Telsnerians; the most fearsome race in the galaxy.

Here's the first submission for round 4.

Stranded

Tom J. Ferguson

 

  Sometimes I think that being the only Beriskevic female deep space fighter pilot is great. It sets me apart from the crowd. Just getting the position was a great feat in and of itself. I mean, where I’m from on the planet Beriskev, women do a lot of stuff, but I’m the only one who flies fighters. It was only by a fluke that I got the position. See, the Navy is skeptical about letting women enlist, simply because there are so many men that join, and we go into deep space in warships. A woman’s privacy is all but nonexistent, and that only leads to problems. So, typically, women don’t enlist in the Navy or Army. There are lots of women in the First Response Defense Patrol though. The FRDP is a branch of the military, however, they never go any farther than the edge of the farthest moon’s orbit. They are strictly a defensive force. The FRDP is where I got my start. I have been flying all my life. I started flight school when I was five, at my own request. Most little girls want to learn ballet, or horseback riding, or acting school, or singing. Stuff like that. Not me. I’ve never been comfortable as long as my feet were on the ground for as long as I could remember. So, I asked my parents if I could take flight lessons when I was little. I was a natural right from the very beginning. Flight controls come to me easier than walking or talking.
  When I was eighteen, I enlisted in the FRDP as a fighter pilot. I already knew how to fly- so it wasn’t hard to learn combat maneuvers, and I took to it naturally. I became the best pilot in the FRDP in a matter of months. So, naturally, when the Remissian attack came, I tore up their squadrons. I had already established a reputation by that time, and though I stayed right with my squadron, I still got more kills than the rest of them combined. The Remissians surprised us, but we still held them off. During the fight, and Navy Admiral on shore leave ended up in the FRDP Flight Control room, and he saw first hand what my skills were like. He recruited me personally, and asked me to fly with the Alpha Squadron of his flagship. Me fly in an Alpha Squadron? A nineteen year old girl only out of Combat Flight School for a few months, and they wanted me to fly in a Navy Combat Fleet’s most advanced, best skilled squadron? Wow, what an honor. Of course, I said yes. I would be flying with the Fifteenth Tactical Fleet in the Beriskev Navy’s oldest, and most reputable combat fleet. The Fifteenth is where every Navy crewman wants to be. The best of the best. The Fifteenth Fleet was one of fifteen formed for the Beriskev Navy during our revolution fifty years ago. Before that, we were just an outlaying colony of Earth, the only human settlement in the Andromeda Galaxy. We were so far away that Earth didn’t bother with us, until we formed our own government that is. Then suddenly, they were right there to remind us who was boss. After two hundred years of nothing from them, no supplies, no funds, no contact whatsoever but to replace the governor as needed, we decided to form our own government. Suddenly Earth remembered that we exist. We beat them after ten long years of war, and fourteen of our fleets were completely annihilated. We suffered ninety percent casualties in our army through the whole war, but somehow we won. Now we are facing an enemy that hates our guts for who knows what reason. The Remissians are the plague of the Andromeda Galaxy. If one person looks at one Remissian the wrong way, the Remissians will try to wipe out that person’s entire race. So, of course, when our Prime Minister told the Remissians that they can’t mine on our moons without the proper permits, they got really ticked and attacked. That’s when the Admiral found me. Now, two years later, at the age of twenty-one, I am still the only female fighter pilot in the Navy. And, it is quite an accomplishment. It can get a little depressing being the only woman in the Navy, especially when I’m deployed. I have no other girls to talk to. The guys all pretty much give me what  I want- having a woman aboard the ship is a luxury for them- or so they thought right at first. Then they found out that I don’t date every guy that I see, and then I was just part of the crew, just another lieutenant from one of their squadrons. And then we get to the first of the Remissian colonies, and the fight starts. My entire squadron gets blown away, and I am left to fend of twelve Remissian fighters alone. Okay, I am a great pilot, but even I am not that good. I shot down six of them, and retreated into the low atmosphere where I could use the abundant magnetic fields of this planet to keep them from getting a missile lock on me. And that’s when I found out that their fighters didn’t have that problem with their missiles. Yeah. I found out the hard way.
“Great, Miena, great. Now you gotta sit here behind this big, red, iron rich boulder until the rescue team finds you,” I muttered to myself.
I don’t get what the value of this planet is, the only mineral it’s got is iron, and it is very abundant in it. Useless stuff anyway. Weakest metal in the Andromeda galaxy right there.

There were only 2 submissions for round 3, but they were both good. Read them both and vote for your favorite in the poll to the right.

Here's the second submission for round 3.

The Rock

by Hazen Wardle

“The little planet looking thing in the distance there,” I told my grandson, who was perched on my
knee. “That was my home. And that is me, there, on the surface of that asteroid.”

“Really?” he asked, eyes wide with wonder.

“Yep. That was house and a space-ship. They did not make very many like that. It was an experimental
model, the first with true-artificial gravity.”

“Et-sterimental” the boy parroted. “Grabity?”

“Experimental,” I corrected. “It means it was the first one. It was built for practice.”

He nodded, a look of vague understanding on his face. “And gravity, my boy, is the stuff that keeps you
stuck to the floor. If we turn it off you’d float all over the place, like a balloon.”

“That was your house?” my other grandson asked. “It looks huge!”

“Actually, it wasn’t very big at all. Your grandmother and I lived in it quite nicely for many years as
we traveled through the solar system. It was comfy for us, but we would not have had much room if
someone were to come with us.”

“Well if it was not very big, how did the gravity work?”

“That’s the neatest part about it. The ring around the outside wasn’t just for decoration or to make it
look like Saturn, though if some amateur astronomer were to view it through a telescope it may confuse
them.” I chuckled in spite of myself, but the humor was lost on the kids so continued my tale. “The ring
actually spun around the rest of the sphere. It was nuclear powered, so it could go for years and years.
The spinning generated the electricity and created the gravity.”

“How’d it do that, Grandpa?” my oldest grand-daughter asked.

“Well, you know how electricity is generated. Spinning a magnet inside a coil of wire.”

“Yes, silly. I know that. I mean how’d the spinning create gravity?”

“Ah, that’s a secret I don’t really know the answer to. Physics and gravometrics is not my area of
expertise. I just know it worked.”

“So what did you and Gramma do in it? Where did you go?”

“We went all over. We visited Earth’s moon. Jupiter, Mars, Saturn. The Asteroids.”

My oldest grandson snickered. “That must have been funny to see a mini Saturn orbiting the real one.”

“Oh, I imagine some of the space stations then orbiting Saturn thought so too.”

“So what were you doing on the asteroid?” my grand-daughter asked.

“Checking samples. We needed to refill the supply tank for the food production unit. As long as it had a
good supply of most elements and minerals, it could make nearly anything. “

“Did you find any?”

“Oh, yes. We found what we needed. I even found a small rock I later had made into a ring.”

“Is that the ring Gramma always wears? That ugly little stone?”

I smiled. I never really thought it was ugly. “That is the one. It’s made out of some really special stuff.”

My young grandson on my knee pointed at the picture in the album, indicating me in the space-suit. “If
that is you, where is Gramma?”

I rubbed his head and chuckled. “Why, she is the one taking the picture. She wouldn’t let me go down
onto the surface of the asteroid without her. ‘There is no way I am going to stay cooped up in this thing
while you go down and have fun.’” I tried mimicking her voice but did a terrible job at it.

All the kids laughed. “Gramma? In a space suit? That I gotta see. Do you have a photo that?”

“Yes, it’s around here somewhere.” I answered, flipping through the photo album. “Ah yes, here we go.”
I pointed out a group of astronauts, each decked out in flight gear and a helmet tucked under one arm.

“That’s Gramma? But Gramma has white hair!”

“Silly boy. Of course that is Gramma. She was young once, and she had flaming red hair to boot.”

“She’s perty,” my littlest granddaughter commented. “That’s right, sweetie” I responded, rubbing her
hair affectionately.

Ignoring the mushy stuff, one of my grandsons jumped back to the photo at hand. “So what did you find
on the asteroid?”

“Ah, yes.” I leaned back and laced my hands behind my head.

“Well?” he pushed anxiously.

“We got the mineral supply we desperately needed, if that’s what you mean.”

“But…you got something else didn’t you?” I just grinned. He grinned back before coaxing it out of
me. “Come on, Granpa, tell us. What did you and Gramma find?”

“It was just after she took this picture,” I answered, pointing at the photograph. She had just jumped
from the ship and was in the process of landing. You see, the suits we wore could do that in light gravity,
easily go to and from the ship. We couldn’t land on Earth. The gravity alone would kill us if re-entry
didn’t burn us up first.”

“So what happened, Grandpa? What did you find?” one of the girls asked.

“Believe it or not, this little rock had a cave. It wasn’t a cave in the traditional sense. It was more of a
hole in the ground. Drilled into the face of the rock by a smaller asteroid. She stumbled upon it, well,
nearly into it actually. She had to hop over it, but that was easy as this little rock had very little gravity.
She reversed jets on her pack to keep from floating away, and the hollered for me to come check it out
with her.”

“Did a monster jump out at you, Granpa? Were you scared?”

“Nah. We weren’t scared. Maybe we should been, but we were young and reckless. But it didn’t matter
at the time, thankfully.”

“So what happened?”

“It was a gold mine.”

“Gold, Granpa?”

“Well, not actually gold…” I was stringing them along, drawing it out.

“Not gold?” the little girl asked.

“Nah. We found two things. One was a new mineral. Gilsonarium-that’s what’s on your Grandmother’s
ring. The first piece of it from the rock. They use the stuff in star drives now.”

“And the other?”

“Diamonds. Lots and lots of big diamonds…” I made a motion with my hands as if holding a basketball.

Here's the first submission for round 3. Sort of a mind bender.

Lonely

Tom J. Ferguson
 

  I finally made it! After three years of intense training and preparation, and then another two years in flight at ninety-nine point nine percent of light speed- so fast that relative and actual time are different- I finally made it. I had been in flight for what seemed like two years to me. A couple hundred- thousand centuries had passed in real time back home on Earth, which is fine by me. The only family I had was an abusive father who drove away any friends I ever made. By the time I got home, four hundred thousand centuries or more will have passed for Earth, while only six years passed for me. I would be here for two years, then Universal Aeronautics and Space Administration would give me another assignment. If I can help it, I will never return to Earth again. I was excited to be here, even though there is not much to see besides one frozen gas planet with no star to orbit. It just kinda drifted through space over the eons until it got here about a century ago. Where is here you might ask? That is a great question. The answer is that ‘here’ is the defined edge of space. For thousands of years on Earth, and even throughout the galaxy, the accepted theory was that there was no edge to space. It just continued on forever. But the truth is, there is actually an edge. And there is this really strange force-field there. Using modern imaging technology, UASA has been able to map this barrier completely. It encompasses the entire universe. We now know a definite size of the universe. If we say that one Galactic Measurement Unit, or GMU, is one-hundred thousand light-years, then we can use that to give a size of the universe. It is over nine-hundred trillion GMU’s across. It is a perfect cube, so that is a pretty accurate measurement. Freaking huge, isn’t it? Well, anyway, my job here is to collect molecular samples of any form from the force-field, or energy samples if there is no molecular structure, and figure out what it is made of. Seems simple enough, right? Yeah, nothing is ever as it seems. If it was really as easy as collecting a sample, and analyzing it, we would already know what it was made of. For some reason, our scanners and analyzers always show that there is nothing there. The programs always ask us to put a sample in, and so we try again, and it still shows nothing. We do know something is there, though, because even a G-bomb (a nuclear weapon powerful enough to destroy an entire galaxy with one blast) had no effect on it. It hit it, and detonated, but did nothing to it, and neither the shock wave nor the blast went beyond the barrier. It just kinda absorbed it. It was weird. I have analyzed that data over and over again. So, they sent me out here to try and figure it out. Apparently, I am UASA’s top physicist, which many people find hard to believe, considering my age. I am seven years old. By Earth standards that is. If we take away my space travel and assume that I’d never left Earth, I’d be seven. But I understand physics better than anyone else in the universe. You know the Energetic Bend technique? Where you take a beam of light and make it bend without using any physical barriers? No machines, no prisms, nothing like that. Just the light itself. It was me that discovered that. I figured out that if you understand physics at enough of an advanced stage, you can manipulate light simply by whispering to it. Almost like controlling it with your mind. You can summon it. You can command it. It turns out that light itself is a living thing. Weird, huh? You just have to know how to talk to it. People think it’s amazing when I walk into a room, and command all the light to condense into a small orb the size of a golf ball, and to stay there, and stay visible, but not to cast the light outward. It is like looking at a yellow golf ball in the exact center of a dark room, and that is all that is visible. I tired to explain this, but no one understands. At any rate, everyone thinks that if anyone can figure this out, I can. And I intend to. I want to try something. I am stepping off the shuttle that just landed on the barrier. I am standing in my space suit on the barrier. I am walking away from the shuttle. I am looking up at the weird, starless planet. I am kneeling down.
“Hello. I am Allison,” I whisper to the barrier.
“Hello, Allison,” It whispers back.
“How are you?” I ask it.
“I am good,” It responds.
  It feels shy. No one has ever spoken to it before.
“Are you lonely?” I ask it.
“Yes. No other creature besides you understands me. The race that created me went extinct billions of eons ago,” It says.
“Are there others like you?” I ask.
“No. I am the only Universe there is. My creators were going to create another one, but they went extinct before they could. They used the last of their energy to create me,” It tells me.
“I am sorry. I know what it is like to be alone,” I tell it.
“Indeed you do, Allison. You are the last of that race. Sleeping for billions of eons, finally awake,” It tells me.

There are 3 great submissions for round 2 and a new poll to choose the best story. I'll be posting a new image for round 3 shortly.

Here's the 3rd submission for round 2. Enjoy.

There’s no Place like Haven

by Samuel T. Cogley

“Holy crap, Gary! What happened down there?” Garland Bothwell was jolted awake by his wife’s voice as her image flickered on the screen.
“Oh..Honey..It’s a long story. You must be hearing all kinds of crazy stuff on the news.”
“Did the boys make out alright?”
“Yeah, I was the last one out. I cut it pretty close. I think my shuttle got it’s tail singed a little.” Gary began to recount the tale of his family’s escape from the settlement on the planet below. The day had started out normal enough. The alarm clock woke him up at 8:00 am with the news broadcast. He liked to listen to the stories from Earth since his family left nearly a year ago. It was such a contrast from the life they had made on Kepler 484c, or Haven as it was locally known. The boys should have been out checking the moisture level in the fields by this time. As he began to sip his orange juice, he got a call from his oldest boy, Max.
“Dad! You there?”
“Yeah, Max. What’s up?”
“Switch your news to the local broadcast. Something weird is going on. Dewey and I are headed back to the house now.” Gary called up the local broadcast, but all that was playing was an evacuation order on repeat.
“This is not a drill. This is an actual emergency. Proceed to evacuation shuttles for immediate departure.” The message continued to repeat as Gary ran from the kitchen to his office and brought up the local news net. The headline filled the screen. “Reclaimer ships sighted in orbit. Evacuation in progress.” Gary noticed the time stamp was several hours ago. They would be planet-side by now. He disconnected the computer core unit and slid it into the back of his portable smart pad, then he made for the front door. Max called again. “Dad! We’re pulling into the yard. Where are you?!”
“I’m headed out the front door.” He looked to the North as he came out and saw something on the horizon. It was a Reclaimer ship, and it wasn’t wasting any time. “Max! We gotta go now!” Gary exclaimed as he jumped into the farm truck.
“Who are the Reclaimers, Dad?” asked Dewey.
“Environmental extremists.” said Gary. “They oppose any off-Earth settlement. They use those giant ships to remove anything man-made. The irony is that they do more damage than settlers ever would.” Dewey looked out the back window. The mammoth ship was ripping out fence posts and irrigation conduits at the edge of the farm with an intense yellow beam. “I didn’t know they had left the Sol system.”
“Is Mom still up at the station?”
“As far as I know. I hope she stayed there when the Reclaimer ships were sighted in orbit.”
Dewey and Gary looked back again to see the tractor that was in the yard being pulled up by the yellow beam. The house was next. Gary was glad he had taken his computer core.
“What about the settlers defense corps?” Max asked.
“They are spread pretty thin, and Haven is relatively new settlement. They‘ll get here, but it may not be soon enough. Dang! I hope your mother stayed put.” Max hit the accelerator hard enough to throw them back in their seats. The family was headed to a shuttle hangar on the other side of the mesa near the power station. The other farmers in the area would be headed there as well. Gary had an idea. If the Reclaimers were slowed down, maybe the defense corps would have a chance at stopping them.
“There’s the shuttle hangar. Looks like the McDaniel’s are there already.” said Max.
“Good for them.” thought Gary. Max stopped the truck at the hangar door and the boys got out.
“Dad! Come on!” yelled Dewey.
“Here, take the computer core. There’s something I have to do. I’ll follow you guys up in the last shuttle. Jump in with the McDaniel’s. They should have room.” Gary got into the driver seat and floored it, leaving the two boys standing there. He looked into the rear view mirror and saw them boarding the shuttle with Bob McDaniel.”Thanks Bob.” whispered Gary. The power station was just ahead, and the behemoth Reclaimer ship was roughly a mile away. “This is going to be close.” Gary muttered to himself. He had helped install this power reactor when the farms were established. The Reclaimer ship was sure to rip it up, and a reactor overload could do some heavy damage to it. The power station was automated, with a control room near the entrance. The farmers maintained it, so Gary had the codes in his smart pad to get in and access the computer. He cranked the output to full and routed the power stream back into the reactor. Then he made for the exit. The long dark shadow of the reclaimer ship blanketed the station as Gary jumped back in the truck and took off for the hangar. He pulled up to the hangar, ran inside and saw Bernie Garth and his family boarding the last shuttle.
“Gary! Get in here. We have room!” Bernie yelled. Gary boarded the shuttle and closed the hatch.
“Punch it, Bernie!” The shuttle rumbled as it left the hangar, and Gary buckled himself into the last remaining seat.
“What were you doing by yourself? Where are Allison and your boys?” asked Bernie.
“Allie is up on the station, and the boys made it out with the McDaniel’s. I had to leave a little treat for that Reclaimer ship.”
“The power station?”
“Yep. It should be gobbling it up just about now. Things could get a little bumpy.”
“It’s going down, alright. Hold on.” The gigantic ship plowed into the ground, and the shock wave rocked the shuttle violently. Bernie hit the throttle and the ride smoothed out. Gary relaxed and began to nod off as the shuttle left the atmosphere. It was then that his smart pad screen lit up and Allison’s face appeared.
“Holy crap, Gary! What happened down there?”

Second submission for round 2.

Illusion of Paradise

Tom J. Ferguson

  Paradise. Scratch that. The illusion of paradise. That’s what it was that lured us into that hell-hole that got half my platoon killed, and another five critically wounded. I stared down at my brother, laying on the little bed in Sick Bay on the destroyer that rescued us. He was one of the five wounded. A plasma blast to the abdomen. He would be lucky to live long enough to return home. We were not accustomed to the weapons that the enemy used. They were using energy and plasma based weapons that cut through our armor like a hot knife through butter. Our ballistic weapons are effective on them, too, as they consider ballistic weapons to be so primitive that they have no practical defense against them. I stared down at my little brother. He was asleep for the time being, as the doctor had recommended. He was so young, barely eighteen years old. This was his first combat deployment, and we were returning home from it, victorious, though just barely. Our ship had been crippled during our original battle near Tikkomon Seven, and it had been limping home. We had gone off course, and passed a lush, green planet. As we passed, we received a transmission from the surface.

“Greetings,” The voice on the other end said, after the transmission had been translated by the ship’s computer.

“Hello. I am Captain Johnson of the USS Plymouth Rock,” Our Captain had responded.

“Captain Johnson, our satellites in your vicinity tell us your ship is crippled. Is this true?” The voice asked.

“Yes,” The Captain had responded simply.

“We will send a repair crew out. Feel free to stay on the surface of our planet, and recuperate while we repair your ship,” The voice had said.

“Not to be rude, but how do we know we can trust you? I mean, we are at war with a cunning, and ruthless enemy. How do we know you are not working for them?” Captain Johnson asked.

“It is very simple. We have no military at all. We do not fight. We are a very hospitable people, concerned with peace, and comfort. If you scan our surface, which we would welcome greatly, you will find no weaponry at all,” The voice responded.

  The Captain scanned the surface, and found nothing of concern, so we boarded the shuttles, and landed on the surface, near their main settlement, while they fixed our ship. We were told it would take a week or so, which was fine with us because it would take a couple months to get home in the condition our ship was in. It was the only surviving Earth ship from Tikkomon Seven, and our long range communications had been knocked out in the fight.

  For the first couple of days, we relaxed, and enjoyed ourselves while our ship was being repaired. On the third day though, the Tikkomonians showed up, and took us by surprise. The fighting was intense, and we suffered heavy casualties right off the bat. We ended up winning the fight, but the Tikkomonians had killed more than half of us. The entire population of the settlement was killed in the fight. We found out later that the Tikkomonians had been watching that planet, an d waiting for Earthlings to land there. They had asserted mind control over the locals, and the locals had no idea of this. I recovered the flag of the local settlement. I have it in my pack. It shows a lush green meadow, with a rusty colored mountain behind it, with a cruise liner taking off over a farm. It is a very warm, and inviting image. But everyone who lived on that planet is now dead, and the Tikkomonians are setting up an outpost there.

  “Hang in there, Jim,” I whispered to my brother, then I turned to go to the bridge of the ship. There was an officer’s meeting going on there, and as the Lieutenant of my platoon, I had to be there.

  The meeting was boring as most are, just the typical stuff that goes on. Re-supply schedule, time to arrival at Earth, troop counts, maintenance concerns and so on. After the meeting, I went back to Sick Bay.

  Ten hours later, we were in orbit of Earth. The doctor found me in my quarters, gathering up all my gear at that time.

“Lieutenant Victoria Carson?” He addressed me.

“Yeah?” I said, turning around to look at him.

“Ma’am, I am sorry to inform you that your brother, Private Jim Carson, US Marine Corps, has just passed away from his injuries sustained in combat,” The doctor said.

  My entire body filled with rage at hearing this news. I stormed out of my quarters, and to the shuttle bay. As soon as we were Earth side, I convinced my superiors to redeploy me to the Tikkomon System right away.

  I visited Jim at the morgue.

“They’ll pay for this, Jim. They’ll pay. I promise you. I will avenge you!”

Here's the first submission for Round 2.

Deliverance?

by Hazen Wardle

Damian Willet shuffled through the line, the over-sized pressure suit weighing heavily on his young body. It was only his second day in the Martian ice mines and if he never saw another power-pick again it would be too soon. Last week his father had been working the mine when a wall collapsed. There were fortunately no casualties but he had severely injured his left leg and would be unable to work for at least two months while it healed. Under threat of eviction from the housing bubble 12 year old Damian took it upon himself to be the family’s bread winner until said time when his father could again return to the mines.

Slowly the line inched forward as the workers were allowed to re-enter the communal city bubble through specialized decontamination and re-pressurization chambers. Without proper pressure the bubbles would not only collapse but life would be utterly impossible without the use of the specialized pressure suits. The bubbles themselves held the correct air mixture and temperatures, as well as keeping out the harsh Martian winds.

Upon stepping out of the chamber young Damian was immediately accosted by a kid who could not be more than nine. The boy was filthy from head to toe and looked like he could use a good meal. The kid waved a sheet of paper in Damian’s face. “Take eet! Take eet!” the kid demanded. Damian did as instructed, intent on only ridding himself of this pesky street rat.

As he trudged home he read the sheet of paper. Excited, he took a slight detour.

“You’re an hour late, son!” Damian’s mother yelled across the small habitat bubble they called home. “Where have you been? It’s getting late and the curfew dogs will be out soon. Your father and I have been worried!”

“Look Ma,” Damian declared excitedly as he thrust the flier in his mother’s face. “We can finally get out of here and have a real life!”

Pauline Willet, Damian’s mother, took the flier and scrutinized it. A large photo, an obviously doctored one at that, showed a verdant green prairie with a large rust colored mountain of a rock in the background. A bulbous terraformer hovered over the prairie, dropping an old-time farm house and a tractor down onto the un-inhabited land. It was obviously not the way things happened, but it got the point across. Life is easy and peaceful on Droogina, the caption claimed, in bright, happy letters.

“We can’t afford this!” She exclaimed, shaking the paper.

“Of course we can!” Damian countered, snatching the paper from her. “See? First 100 families free! That’s why I was late. I was the second in line. We’re going to Droogina!”

Damian’s father hobbled over on his crutches and looked at the flier. Tears welled up in his eyes.  “Thank you son,” the older man said, choking on his tearful happiness. “I’ve always dreamed of living in a place like this. My grandparents always used to tell me how wonder of a place Earth used to be, before the governments destroyed it with it regulations and wars. Now I get to live it, albeit on another planet.”

The family hugged, eager and intent on starting a new life.

Hours earlier.

A filthy young boy climbed a pile of refuse and slipped over a tall fence. He wore no shoes and his clothing, once a one piece outfit, now sleeveless and in tatters, torn across the midsection into two pieces. Industrial tape scrounged from discarded packages held the outfit together.

The boy crawled underneath a derelict street sweeper and into a passage hidden under the belly of the thing. Moments later he emerged from behind a spindly, starved for water brush on the edge of a broken down park. Brushing dirt from h is clothing he strode across the abandoned playfield and stared intently at two older boys, sitting in a booth inside a makeshift diner. With big eyes and a hungry stomach he watched as the two stuffed their faces with something hot.

“Hey kid!” The boy did not notice, he was so hungry. “Kid!” the voice repeated. The boy looked in the direction the noise came from, only to see a sleek black hover limo on the opposite side of the pockmarked street. A man in a dark hat was waving to him from behind the lowered window. The boy trotted over, keeping one eye on the boys in the diner.

“You hungry?” the man asked. Wide eyed with anticipation the boy nodded. “I’ll buy you some food if you do me a favor,” the man stated simply, but with a slight smirk on his face. The kid nodded.

The man handed a stack of papers out the window. “Pass these out and you can have whatever you like.” Naturally the boy took the papers and spent the next hour handing them out as workers reentered the habitat bubble.

Days earlier.

The man in the dark hat stepped into his luxurious office. The Governor’s building was the tallest of the city, built only a few years prior under the much newer, glass walled dome abutting the flimsier inflated domes of the older settlement.

“Alton.” Hearing his name made all the hairs on his neck stand on end. He looked to the source, and he knew why. There, in his antique, imported-from-Earth leather chair sat his boss, someone he rarely encountered. She only showed up when she needed something.

“Rowena, how nice to see you.”

“Let’s dispense with the pleasantries. You know why I am here.”

“But, I can’t spare anyone this time.”

“Of course you can. It’s in your contract. Unless you want to go instead. I hear the sulfur mines of Io are quite warm this time of year.”

Alton slumped down into a chair opposite his desk, a position he was not at all comfortable with assuming. “Fine. How many do you need?”

“An even hundred should do it. I presume you can glean some ‘volunteers’ out the poorest of your people. Make it one hundred families and we’ll call it good, for now.”

“How am I going to get people to willingly volunteer to work the Saturnian mines? Everyone knows how deadly they are.”

“You’ll think of something,” Rowena stated coldly as she rose from his chair. She walked calmly to the door and looked back. “You have one week to deliver, or it’ll be you working those mines, my friend.”

She turned and walked calmly out of his office. He could still hear the echo of her heels on the tiled floor long after she had gone.

Posting the picture for round 1 to keep it with the submissions.

Here's another submission. These are turning out to be really good. Thanks for participating.

LONGING FOR PLANET TURQUOISE

By Terry Dale

Vandar sat down on a rock overlooking the colony.  A shuttle craft approached for a landing probably from one of the other hamlets or villages on the moon they inhabited.  He liked coming up here to watch planet Turquoise rise from the east.  The mother planet, Turquoise, was the original home for his human species.  The first colonizer of this moon named it Austere because of the unforgiving, inhospitable environment they had to eke a living upon and the mother planet, Turquoise, for the green and bluish hue of her surface.  He gazed with nostalgia at the mother planet.  He had been born there 22 years ago.  There he could breathe the air without wearing this artificial life suit he had to wear in Austere’s environment.  That was before the time of the Great Chaos as the tribal historians now called it.  Before the Chaos the mother planet had large cities with industry, great farms with all variety of foods, sandy deserts, blue, white-capped mountains with snow, and amazing landscapes on earthy land masses.  However, the relative peace began to erode gradually over the last hundred years on the mother planet.  First, the separation between the rich and the poor in communities, local governments and even nations began to grow wider and wider.  Greed, suspicion, envy, indifference to suffering, theft and violence began to creep into societies throughout the planet.  Wise men and prophets and philosophers began to warn the people of the importance of charity, respect and kindness in relationships if their species were to survive.  The warnings were ignored.  Great divisions occurred and multiple wars occurred on all continents between tribal groups and even nations.  Prophets warned that the Creator Gods were sorrowed and angry with their behavior especially the slaughter of innocent women and children and warned that cataclysmic events were near which would wipe clean the planet of their wickedness.  Some listened but most did not.  Then it had begun.  In the first year of the Great Chaos hundreds of earthquakes ripped giant gashes in all ocean beds throughout the planet.  The wounds in the ocean floor were so deep that mountains of water poured into the white hot magma below the crust.  In the first count the historical record revealed to Vandar there were 1,250 giant pillars of steam rising out of the oceans into the atmosphere that year and 23 coastal cities had been destroyed by earthquakes and tsunamis.  But that was only the beginning.  The steam changed the climate turning the planet into a giant sauna.  Vicious storms dumped flooding rain throughout the globe accompanied by a 400 percent increase in tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning and flooding rain.  The poles of the planet had tremendous ice caps and glaciers.  They melted at a rapid pace.  The oceans encroached inland covering many cities a little at a time.  The people were driven inland.  The disastrous climate changes made farming almost impossible.  Food was scarce.  At first, for a period of 5 to 6 years after the Great Chaos began, communities rallied to help one another and governments of nations tried to provide aid to those they governed.  More people began to petition the Gods.  Neighbor tried to help neighbor- for a while.  A respite occurred.  A pause in mother nature’s fury.  But then over the space of 2 to 3 years turf wars emerged.  People fought over what remained of property and possessions and food.  Envy, greed, and violence crept in again.  The mother planet seemed to sigh sadly and resumed her efforts to rid herself of the unholy, violent beings that occupied her surface.  

Vandar continued to ponder the history of the greenish mother planet as it rose over the horizon.  He glanced at his wrist.  His oxygen pack had another 45 minutes left.  He did a quick check in all directions.  His helmet, the transparent bubble on his head, allowed for more visibility than the older models.  He had to be wary of the Zoniguns.  When the moon began to be colonized 56 years ago, a shuttle ship from the planet had carried a group of prisoners to do some of the manual labor for the contractor.  An escape occurred.  The Zoniguns had learned how to hide in subterranean caverns, stolen what the needed to survive and often took hostages to trade for supplies or tools.  They had stolen some of the technology needed to supply oxygen to their caverns.  Sometimes if you were alone, they simply killed you and took your life suit and left you naked and dead on the barren surface of the moon to be found by searchers.  In fact, Vandar reminded himself that this had happened to one of their villagers about two weeks ago.

Vandar remembered the last day he had been on planet Turquoise.  He was eleven years old.  His parents handed him, his sister Janar and brother Konar over to his uncle and aunt on a rescue shuttle craft.  His parents wept and hugged them and said they would try to get a ride on the next craft.  They never came.  The wars had continued.  The flooding and storms resumed.  The communication between moon and planet diminished.  And now 11 years later no visible land masses or islands on Turquoise had been seen from Austere and their observatories for years.  It was one complete globe of water.  He sighed sadly.

Suddenly Vandar was aware of a shadow cast over him from behind.  His heart began to race.  Was it the Zoniguns?  For a second he was frozen by fear.  If you don’t move you’ll die, he told himself.  In one rapid movement he lurched to his right while he reached to grab his laser weapon from his thigh holster and twisted his upper body to face the rear as he aimed the laser weapon at the shadow that stood above him.

To be continued….

Copyright Terry Dale September 2011

Here's the second submission by Hazen Wardle.

The Return

The pilot of the Hummingbird approached the wormhole with caution. The sky lit up with the

emitted energy from the swirling, storm-like vortex. Massive generators situated on three remote

asteroids drew their power from fusion based power plants. The asteroids, unmanned and some one

hundred miles apart and a half-light year from any other heavenly body normally were shrouded in

complete darkness. But now, upon activation they were fully illuminated by the wormhole’s emissions.

Captain Janet Leeron had, only moments ago, accessed their data-net and confirmed her security codes

and clearances with the onboard limited AI’s operating the three asteroidal generators.

Confirmed, now the AI’s would individually start their own portions of the wormhole generator.

It was a process that, under normal circumstances, would take mere minutes, though in this case this

wormhole had lain dormant for a long time. It had been over fifty years since the last returning ship

from Druaston passed back through this wormhole.

Unneeded, the AI’s were instructed to power down to bare operating levels, primarily to

maintain an open communication channel for possible future use.

It had taken over five hours for the AI’s to fully power up. Latent systems unused in those fifty

years were slowly activated, and they were only activated if deemed fully safe.

This would be the most crucial part of the trip. If even one component on any of the three plants

failed the wormhole would not be accessible. For this reason Sam Popodopolous II, physics PhD and

fusion specialist was along for the ride. It was his job to monitor the triple power-up, and it would also

fall on his shoulders to fix anything should the need arise.

Fortunately for the small crew of the ‘Hummingbird’, the three power generators activated

without a hitch, though they had all held their collective breath in anticipation. Fifty years lying dormant,

in the bitter cold of deep space, could wreak unknown havoc.

Toni Vandergraff, navigator, was having second and third thoughts about this whole

excursion. “I don’t know Captain,” she voiced her complaint to Leeron, “Something just seems wrong to

me.”

Captain Leeron put her hand on Toni’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Lt. Everything will work out.

You’ll see. I just need you to do your job, ok?”

“OK, Ma’am,” Toni agreed, though still quite unsettled. “I’ll do my job. I just thought I better let

you know something seems strange to me.”

Janet Leeron nodded and thanked Toni, thus ending the conversion. Tony hustled out of the

captain’s quarters and returned to her station at the helm. There she sat for an hour, pouring over her

notes and data. The onboard computer could calculate the proper coordinates and speeds as well as

triangulate the exact entry locations easier and quicker, but she simply felt better double-checking the

figures herself.

Satisfied, she called to the Captain via the communicator on the console. “Everything is set

Captain. Popper has verified the safety of the generators. The course is plotted, and when you give the

command, we can get on with this expedition.

Now, here they sat, staring at the entrance to a wormhole unused for generations. Would it still

lead to the same place? Would it still work? Many questions were voiced by the crew, and many more

remained unspoken.

Normally, Janet—both Captain and Pilot—would delegate a procedure as routine as this to her

co-pilot, Tom Iverson, but the excitement was too great for her. With the ship in semi-auto pilot, she

eagerly eased the stick forward, lining the hummingbird up with the swirling vortex.

“Everyone ready for this?” She called out. “Hold on to something, cuz here we go!”

Responding to her delicate touch, the Hummingbird slowly eased forward, and then in one

sudden streak of light, it shot into the heart of the wormhole.

The transmission was instantaneous, and the small ship quickly emerged from the other end of

the wormhole, also suspended in the center of another three generator-bearing asteroids. A faint blue

star hung in the distance.

“Is that ME18011a?” Sam ‘Popper’ Popodopolus asked of the star.

Antonio Peck nodded before answering. “It is—at least, it should be. Five decades is nothing for

the life of a star. It’s doubtful it has shifted position more than even half of a degree.” Immediately he

set about running tests and verification programs to confirm the star they were watching was indeed

ME18011a or not.

In the short 2 years of human occupation of the system, the star, ME18011a, never received a

real name. The only habitable planet had been named Duraston, and the single moon, 1/3 larger than

Earth’s moon, had been named Katistok. Like Earth’s moon, Katistok had no viable atmosphere, and

though the planet was temperate and the air breathable, the land was barely livable. Choked with fast-

growing vines and other plants covering over ninety percent of the few land masses, it proved to be

too big of a battle for settlers. They spent more time clearing away the creeping vines than they spent

planting crops or mining. Meanwhile, the colony on the moon, Katistok, had been successful for two

years. Pre-constructed glass domed cities had been set down on the surface, and thousands immigrated

from the crowded Sol system. Much like the gold rush of 1849 to California, Katistok too became

overrun with get-rich quick mining prospectors.

Unfortunately, a severe epidemic had broken out. Unknown whether it was brought into the

Duraston system with the immigrants, or if the strain had lain dormant in the Katistok soil, what was

known was that it was devastating, wiping out over three quarters of the population in less than three

weeks.

The people were evacuated and the system was abandoned, leaving the domed cities on

Katistok barren, as the moon orbited slowly around the blue planet Duraston.

The dead were evacuated via unmanned drone ships, the survivors quarantined aboard their

own vessels, leaving a pre-built civilization ready to inhabit, if only a cure and a vaccine could be

discovered.

Now armed with the long awaited vaccine, Janet Leeron, grand-daughter of the only remaining

survivor, was returning to her grandfather’s home on the moon of Duraston.

The Hummingbird orbited the moon, scanning the surface for any indications of life, though as

expected, all scans returned as negative.

Gently she eased the ship down onto the surface, landing the Hummingbird on a pad separated

from the main dome. Anyone entering the abandoned colony would be required to traverse the lunar

surface. Even though the ships airlock could dock directly with that of the domed city, Captain Leeron

decided to play it safe and keep the ship away from potential contamination.

“Suit up folks! Let’s go see if we can make this place safe once more!”

Thirty minutes later five white suits lumbered slowly across the cold, barren surface of Katistok.

The airlock door was shut tight. Janet cautiously moved over to the control panel, but there was no

power.

“I was afraid of that,” she muttered over the radio to her companions. “That just leaves us with

the manual over-ride.”

Mounted to the opposite side of the door frame was a hinged metal box with a simple padlock.

“Manual controls are inside this box,” Janet declared, pointing at the box. “Where’s the key,

Antonio?”

Antonio, fumbling with fingers rendered overly-fat buy the environment suit, opened a pouch

velcroed to his suit. Peering inside he removed a small flashlight. Flicking the light on he further

searched the pouch. Discovering nothing, he gasped.

“What?” Janet demanded to know.

“I forgot it.”

She pointed back toward the ship, and sounding every bit the mother that she was, she

said “You march right on back there and get it, mister!”

“No, I mean I forgot it. I left it on the nightstand back at the hotel.”

Surprised, Janet was unable to speak. Without that key they may not be able to complete the

mission.

Tom Iverson, co-pilot spoke up. “But, that was back on Earth! Before we even left!”

Here's the first submission. Enjoy!

 

Mr. McCurty’s Fantastic Life

by Jack Grimmlaw

“Oh. My. Gosh! BARRY!”

Barry rolled his eyes. He already had a migraine from being in warp speed too long. And then, as soon as they exit, his wife lays into him. How does she even know what’s going on? Even without a migraine he needs five minutes for his eyes to focus. He rolled his head left and saw a big, blue blur.

Brother. I guess I did take a wrong turn at the Albuquerque Space Center.

“I told you to take a left turn at Albuquerque! Quit playing that stupid Words With Friends game while you’re flying!”

“Well, dear, it doesn’t look that bad. It looks serene.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you see a mall on that moon base? I bet that planet doesn’t even have a day spa. How much fuel did we spend? Well there goes our entire vacation. The planet is blue. Blue! What is that? Methane? Argon? Will I have to wear my oxygen tank the entire week? Have you figured out the name of it yet? Well don’t look at me, look at your computer thingy. Oh my gosh! Do you have another migraine? Did you take your Dramamine? You always take it too late. Every trip I say ‘Take your Dramamine while we’re at the space center’. Every. Single. Time. Well, what are you looking at? If you’re not going to answer at least get your computer thingy going and figure out where we’re at.”

Barry had stopped listening at Argon. He zoned out but had learned over time to zone back in when her lips stopped moving. He wasn’t sure what she had been talking about but he figured maybe he could at least look at the star system data and figure out what planet they were at. Man, why did he have such a migraine? He should have taken his Dramamine. She had told him to take it but he was trying to figure out how to play off that ‘u’. If he could just think of a five letter word that starts with ‘u’ and ends with ‘q’. He remembered seeing it somewhere, but what was it?

Ah, there we go. They were in the Pordieau star system. In fact, Predu, the only habitable planet is nicknamed the Blue Marble. Heavy on argon, but still breathable to Humans, Mortins, and Feritau. Inhabitable for Erins and Grottons. Good, he thought, I can’t stand Grottons. They monopolize the conversation and they have way too much hair and shed like every day is molting season.

“Hey, look at that,” he said out loud absent-mindedly. He didn’t really mean to talk out loud. Talking out loud would get her going again.

“Oh, you’re going to make the best of the situation? Are you kidding me? If we have to land on that moon base and then take a commuter shuttle to a port and wait in line and get a vaccine I am going to SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM!”

“You just did.”

“BARRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

“Yes?”

“Just tell me! What? What? What do you want me to look at?”

“Well, it’s nothing you’d be interested in but—“

“Lovely.”

“—but they have a Mediterranean spa. In fact, a quarter of the planet are Earth expats who migrated here after the Grotton war. In fact, the capital city Prin in the country of Pyrth sits on the Salt Water Sea equal in salt content to Earth’s Dead Sea. It says ‘You will never want to leave this beautiful city when you feel your luscious, soft skin after one treatment with our fine mineral salts.’”

“Yeah, well, but do I have to wear a mask? That’s not very enjoyable.”

“No. In fact, the argon level is low enough for us but too much for grottons.”

“Really? Okay, I’ll give you that.”

“In fact, because I’m an ambassador to Fike, who introduced the tourism industry to Predu, I get five star upgrades! Can you believe that? I’ve never heard of this planet. Why haven’t I ever heard of this planet?”

“I’m not even going to answer that.”

“But we still have to land on the moon base.”

“I knew it.”

“But we get to ride in the emissary’s shuttle! And Bre Tarten is scheduled to be on the five o’clock flight!”

“Oh you’re lying to me. Why would Bre Tarten come to a place with a moon base that looks like that? They couldn’t have created an atmosphere by now?”

“Well maybe the antiquated look is their atmosphere.”

“Brother.”

“Well, still, Bre Tarten. Maybe you can get his autograph.”

“Oh, he won’t even talk to us.”

“Well, I am an ambassador. Despite what your father says, it does carry clout.”

“Yeah, on Predu.”

“Well if Bre Tarten is here, maybe there are other famous people here. You gotta give me something. I’ve already been upgraded.”

His wife sat looking at the big, blue marble. She was quiet. How about that? Barry didn’t dare say anything or make any unusual movements. He continued to pretend to read the monitor. He enjoyed the silence.

The coordinates came in for the assigned port and he quietly adjusted the flight controls to take them there. He uploaded their file and passport info. After a few minutes the silence was broken by a communication signal.

“Mr. McCurty?”

“Yes.”

“If your calendar is free, Mr. Bre Tarten has invited you and your wife to a private party tonight. Will you accept?”

Barry looked at this wife. She was fanatically signaling ‘yes!’

“Yes, it appears our calendar is free.”

“I will let him know. We don’t receive royalty that often out here on Predu.”

He looked at his wife. She was mouthing ‘royalty’. She was very excited.

“I look forward to meeting you.”

“Thank you, Mr. McCurty. Please accept the new coordinates to dock at the Umiaq port. We will greet you soon. Transmission out.”

Umiaq! That’s the word! I love this place!

“You always pick the best spots!”

“Thank you, love.”