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.”