A Planet for Emily by M S Lawson - HTML preview

A Planet for Emily

 

 

 

By M S Lawson

 

 

ISBN 978-0-9954192-1-6 (e-book)

 

Copyright© 2017 by Mark Steven Lawson writing as M. S. Lawson

 

Published by clearvadersname Pty Ltd

 

www.clearvadersname.com

 

All rights reserved. The book contains material protected under international and national copyright laws and treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without express permission from the publisher.

 

Other books by this author

 

Obsidian’s War The Winter City (e-book, 2022)

 

Obsidian’s War (e-book, 2021)

 

The Musketeers of Haven – a science fiction story (e-book, 2021)

 

Claire takes on the Galaxy (web site Dreame, 2019)

 

Disgraced in all of Koala Bay (e-book, 2016)

 

The Zen of Being Grumpy (Connor Court, 2013)

 

A Guide to Climate Change Lunacy (Connor Court, 2010)

 

Cover image: shutterstock

 

 

Dedicated to Charles, in memory of the discussions on terra forming we have had over the years.

 

The Zards professed peace but attacked and defeated Earth’s navy at the star system known as Crossroads and claimed the human planet as their own. Those humans not enslaved were forced into a secondary site known as Earth Station, or into mining stations along the galactic arm originally built to house just a few miners.

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

A blast of chilled air startled Suzanne out of the doze she had fallen into during her long wait, huddled in one corner of the bar on Lucifer III. A tall, broad-shouldered man in an old naval engineering officer’s great coat stripped of any insignias, opened the bar hatch – they were hatches not doors, as Suzanne had discovered – letting in the frigid air. He stood before the bar, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, evidently in a foul mood.

“It’s freezing outside Matt,” he snapped to the bar tender. “Can’t they keep the dome heated?”

“Saving energy, Rods,” said Matt, and Suzanne knew that the bad-tempered stranger was the person she had travelled three weeks to see. “We need another generating unit on our grid, we need everything.”

Rods grunted, said “beer” and slumped into a stool at the opposite end of the tiny bar from Suzanne, not even looking at her although, except for Matt and an older man nursing a drink along the back wall, she was the only other person in the establishment. Both Matt and the man at the back watched with interest as Suzanne levered herself off her stool and approached the trader.

“Excuse me Rods, is it?” she said as Matt, a beefy, balding man who had previously declared himself to be a friend of Rods, slammed a glass in front of the trader and squirted some beer into with a bar gun.

“Uh,” said Rods without turning around.

“My sister was on the Dawn Treader.”

Rods finally looked around. Suzanne saw steady, grey eyes set in an unshaven face of regular features marred by a long scar that ran from beside the right eye down his cheek. For his part, Rods saw a girl with green eyes, slim build, fine features and short brown hair, but in his recent, bitter experience, good looking girls in bars meant trouble, and he was in no mood for trouble.

“Sorry for your loss,” he said, and turned back to his beer.

“You were in charge of the search for the Dawn?”

“’In charge of’ sounds official,” said the trader without looking around. “I coordinated the search with two others and the heads of settlements. No luck, and it’s been six months. As I said, sorry for your loss. Now, pardon me, but I’ve some serious brooding to do.”

During her long wait, Suzanne had been encouraged by Matt and Matt’s wife Emma who had stood in at the bar for a time, to approach Rods and to plough on regardless of her initial reception. He was, she had been told, a difficult study, but fine once you got past the gruffness.

“I sent you this.” Suzanne opened the screen of her digital assistant and laid it on the bar beside the trader, who glanced sideways at it.

“You were the one who sent those notes?”

“In here is where the Dawn Treader went.”

Matt leaned forward for a better look; the older man who had been there when Rods arrived abandoned his pretense of not listening to the conversation to sidle up to the bar and peer at the screen.

They read:

‘Replicant quoting Blake plus Tiger – 281334141622131411511621’.

“I see you’ve attracted an audience,” said Rods, finally turning on his stool. “Those cryptic notes don’t add up to star catalogue numbers. We tried a cryptographic analysis on those numbers and came up with nothing, Ma’am…”

“Suzanne.”

“Suzanne. This must’ve cost you a tidy sum to send over the squeezed light link, but it makes as much sense here as in Earth Station. You’ve come from Earth Station, right?”

Suzanne nodded.

“So, you came up three weeks by freighter just to point out these notes again?

“Eve, my sister, said everyone had been sworn to secrecy, but the captain had told her more than the others and I wasn’t to write it down or tell anyone. She said they knew where El Dorado was.”

Matt and the older man looked startled; Rods looked bored.

“El Dorado, really?” he said.

“Yes, the legendary city of gold.”

“I know what El Dorado was supposed to mean way back on Earth,” snapped Rods, “but it has a local meaning – a planet where you can walk on the surface.”

“And Eve said her group knew where it was.”

“How did her group find it and why did they tell her? While we’re on the subject, where is it?”

“The people who got her to come said they’d found the site in old records. Both humans and Zards had been there but no Zards now as it’s too far out and they have Earth now…”

“Yes, they have earth,” interjected Matt, and we’ve got nothing.”

“…They needed someone with medical training, and they had trouble because they wanted to keep it secret. They told Eve to get her and her partner to come along on condition that she didn’t tell anyone else, but she left this.”

“Clues her own sister doesn’t understand,” said Rods.

“I thought it must mean something,” Suzanne said, faltering. Suzanne had come a long way convinced that she held the key to her sister’s disappearance, if only she could get those looking for Eve’s group to pay attention. She had thought there would be some form of government and the search would be in the hands of officials. Instead, she had found a lone trader who had given up.

“I looked at these clues every which way I could think of,” said Rods. “I found the replicant poem thing.”

“Replicant poem thing?” Suzanne had been baffled by that reference.

“Sure, in a film a made a very long time ago a sort-of bio soldier called a replicant who’s turned killer walks into an eye shop, where this guy makes eyes for these replicants and quotes Blake.”

“Who’s Blake?” asked Matt.

“Late 18^th century English poet,” said Rods, before Suzanne could speak. “Here – these are the lines.” He fiddled with his own digital assistant and showed the screen to Suzanne.

She read:

Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll’d

Around their shores indignant burning with the fires of Orc

And Bostons Angel cried aloud as they flew thro’ the dark night.

“It’s from ‘America A Prophecy’, – load of total drivel as far as I’m concerned,” said Rods, “but I’m an engineer so what do I know. I preferred Blake’s poem ‘The Tiger’ better.

“Is it a famous poem?” asked the older man.

“Everyone knows the first line, Geoff” said Rods, “and that’s all I can remember ‘Tiger, tiger burning bright’”.

 

“In the forests of the night,” continued Suzanne,

“What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

They all looked at her.

“I teach English,” she said lamely.

“Right, now the English lesson is over,” said Rods, “we need a seven-digit catalogue number or local name, otherwise the lost expedition is going to stay lost. Last they were heard of they were heading towards Bell’s Curve.”

“Bell’s Curve has planets,” said Matt.

“A planet,” said Rods, “and it’s a gas giant; no good at all for human settlement. The captain, Rob, said he was heading towards that system but wouldn’t say anything else. Probably misdirection now that I think of it.”

“You met them?”

“Some of ‘em came here for a drink, when I was here.”

“Right in this bar,” commented Matt.

“Sorry I don’t remember your sister,” said Rods, “it was only a few of them and there were more than 50, right?”

“Fifty-three.”

“They had food for three months and it’s been more than six, not to mention problems with water and oxygen giving out. Recycling systems can need serious love to keep going.”

“But if they did find this El Dorado,” said Suzanne uncertainly, “and there was some life, then they could have foraged, they could have survived longer...”

“Oh sure, anything’s possible I suppose,” said Rods. “I could become a big-time trader, defeat the Zards single handed and win the girl of my dreams. That’s also possible. Wherever these guys are they don’t have comms up as we’ve scanned the likely systems around Bell’s Curve, and we don’t have the equipment to check for stuff like small domes that might be inhabited. There’s certainly no planet with an atmosphere.”

Suzanne had no reply. She had counted on meeting Rods and was now left with nothing. She found herself blinking back tears.

Rods pushed his beer away in irritation and stood up.

“So much for brooding. No one wants to find El Dorado more than me, but we’re at a dead end. Sorry about your sister.” He turned to go.

“Rods, wait,” said Matt. “Suzanne here’s got nowhere to go – she’s been sitting at my bar for 12 hours with just some of my snacks. Why not hire her as your cruise director?” Matt and Emma, who had taken a shine to Suzanne during her long wait, had both said that they would ask Rods to do this, or at least ask him to take her on board, as one way out of the bar.

“You’re joking, right? I am not in the mood for a new cruise director, and Suzanne here teaches English – no offence.”

“None taken,” said Suzanne, blessing Matt.

“When have qualifications been important for your cruise director?” said Matt. “You get your cruise directors from Stacey’s, mostly, an’ then they try to jack the ship.”

“Must you remind me,” growled Rods.

“Hey, Suzanne here is a sensible girl,” said Matt.

“Very sensible.” Suzanne thought she should say something at this job interview.

“She’s in a different league from your other cruise directors and, you know, she’ll add class to your operations.”

“Now I need a marketing presence? I’m turning customers away.”

“Not exactly that,” said Matt, “but your other cruise directors didn’t really reflect well on the ship; use to get up to all sorts of stuff, you know. People look up to you, but you need someone who’s not crazy or dealing on the side to front for you.”

“Dealing on the side? I don’t think I want to know about this.”

“Hey, I’m just saying. Suzanne here is respectable; English teacher, out here because her sister was in the Dawn Treader, mum’s a school principal, dad in navy.”

Rods turned to Suzanne.

“Your dad was in the navy?”

She nodded. “And you must’ve been a naval engineer.”

“How do you know that?” There was sharp edge of suspicion in Rods voice.

“You’re wearing an engineer’s coat without the insignias.”

Rod looked down. “Hmm. What’s your last name?”

“Clark. Dad made captain just before Crossroads.”

“You lost him at Crossroads?”

“And some of my friends.”

The Earth’s navy, painfully rebuilt following an earlier defeat, had been wiped out at the Crossroads system after agreeing to a cease fire. The crews of the few ships that surrendered were executed by the Zards.

“Sorry about your dad, too.”

“We weren’t the only ones affected.”

“Take Suzanne,” said Matt. “She’s lost her dad, let her look for her sister and deal with the passengers. She won’t play them.”

Rods looked at Matt and then at Suzanne, who tried to look sensible.

“Do you know anything about star ships?”

“I recognized an engineer’s coat when I saw one, didn’t I, and I just spent three weeks in a star ship.”

“And she’s been nowhere near Stacey’s,” said Matt.

Rods glared at Matt then at Suzanne. “I’m in no mood for this.” He muttered to himself. “Voluntary basis,” he said to Suzanne. “You can tag along but the work of the ship comes first, before looking for your sister.”

“Okay,” said Suzanne meekly.

“That your stuff?” he said, pointing to Suzanne’s bag on the floor. “Give it to Igor outside.”

He turned to go, but Matt grabbed his arm and whispered to him.

“What?” said Rods, then “How much? Oh, take it off the amount you owe.”

He stalked out of the bar, letting in another blast of chill air.

Suzanne picked up her bag.

“Thanks for all that,” she said to Matt. “I can’t thank you enough, and Emma. I hope to see you both again, soon.”

“You will. The Maxwell, that’s Rods’ ship, comes here often.”

There was another, delicate question. “About the bar tab…”

“Never mind about that now, just go.”

“Oh, okay, but just one question, what is Stacey’s?”

“Um, well, it’s an establishment for men. Those two girls you spoke to who were in here. They didn’t say they were from Stacey’s?”

“Oh,” said Suzanne, then “OH!” as the full implications struck her.

“You’ll be fine,” said Matt, “just go quickly, Rods can be impatient. We’ll talk later.”

Bag in hand, Suzanne dashed out of the bar.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

The cold air of the dome hit Suzanne as she emerged from the bar into one of the narrow, enclosed alleys that served as streets in that colony. Rods was waiting for her, hands thrust deep in his coat pockets.

“’bout time you came.”

“Sorry. I just had a last word to Matt. Said I didn’t have to worry about the bar bill. That was nice of him.” Suzanne smiled, thinking that she had found common ground with Rods in praising Matt.

“Nice, porcine rear end,” was Rods’ bitter response. “He stuck me with your tab. No wonder he was so keen for me to take you on.”

“Oh!” was all Suzanne could think to say.

“Give your bag to Igor,” he said, jerking his thumb at a short, stocky figure that Suzanne now realized had been standing by the door. The figure was dressed improbably in a trench coat that reached almost to the ground and a hat that gave it a passing resemblance to an actor in an old film about detectives. “Igor, this is our new cruise director.”

“Another cruise director?”

“Don’t you start.”

The figure turned towards Suzanne, raising one arm to take her bag. The newly appointed cruise director opened her mouth to give a cherry greeting to this new person but stopped when she realized that Igor was a robot. Its face was a metal mask with two big lenses for eyes, and a speaker for a mouth. The hand which took her bag with ease had three fingers and a thumb, covered by a glove. She had dealt with machines all her life, as everyone had, but had never met an autonomous robot before. There were so many people on Earth Station that there had been no need of them.

“Hello Igor.” It seemed the only thing to say.

“Hello cruise director,” said Igor formally, in a youngish male voice. “I am Igor - Integrated Ground Operating Robot. I go behind Rods in this dome. Other places I go in front.”

“Oh that’s… nice.” Again, it was all Suzanne could think of to say.

“Stop gabbing you two and come.”

Rods stalked off down the alley.

Suzanne was very tired, extremely hungry and quite curious about what she was meant to do as cruise director. But for now, all she could do was follow Rods, walking besides Igor as Rods did not seem to want company.

“Is it far to the ship?” she asked Igor.

“Not far. At the port.”

“It is cold.”

“Yes, cold.”

The robot was not a sparkling conversationalist, but Suzanne thought that Rods’ conversation would be no better. They walked down the alley into the slightly wider alley that served as the main thoroughfare. She thrust her hands deep into her pockets and shivered. On one corner, underneath the ‘to spaceport’ sign was tall, bearded man who smiled nastily at them.

“Druggie!” he said. “Hey, druggie.”

Rods stiffened, then shook his head slightly and moved on. The bearded man, who was taller, wider and grimmer looking than Suzanne’s new employer, stepped in front of Rods.

“Ben are we really going to do this again?” said Rods. “You know what happened last time.”

“Druggie! So where are your drugs, eh?”

Suzanne noted with alarm that there were two more, rough looking men behind the tall man. One was carrying a short club that looked like the leg of a stool. The other was eyeing her. Rods noticed them too.

“Igor front,” he said, without turning around, “face the two men there”. The trader pointed. Igor dropped Suzanne’s bag and edged around the tall man, who eyed the robot curiously, to square up to the other two men. They also did not know quite what to make of Igor, but the club man taped his weapon on his open hand meaningfully.

“So, what’s this about, Ben?” said Rods to the bearded man. “You planning on getting lucky this time?”

“Any time druggie,” said the big man, and he lashed out at Rods. Suzanne barely saw the motion, but Rods moved his head slightly and Ben’s fist struck air. At the same time, the two men in front of Igor lunged, intending to brush the robot to one side. The first man smashed his improvised club on Igor’s hat with an audible clunk, but the robot’s only response was to clamp his hand around his assailant’s wrist and keep it there. The other man tried to shove past the robot, but Igor grabbed his wrist as well and held on despite desperate pulling and shoving, causing the robot’s servomotors to whine audible. A rain of blows from the club, had no noticeable effect.

While Igor was delaying the support squad, Ben tried two more swings, which also hit air. Rods conceded a little ground, leading Ben on, and then hit him twice on the jaw making him stagger. The trader jumped forward, drove another blow home just above the heart, and another on the jaw. His opponent keeled over. Rods caught him before his head hit the alley-way’s concrete floor then lowered him, none too gently, the rest of the way. He stepped over Ben and pulled up the big man’s jacket and shirt.

“Hey, what?” said Ben groggily. He tried to push Rods away. The trader thumped him hard on the side of the head and then tore a square piece of metal from the man’s clothing.

“Plate steel,” said Rods stepping away and rapping the piece of metal. “I thought your stomach looked weird - and you were really confident. A steel plate right where I belted you last time. You were hoping I’d break my hand.” Rods waved the plate in front of Ben who was in no condition to listen. “It’s not that easy, my friend.”

The other two men had stopped struggling after their champion had gone down.

“Igor, release them. Behind me.”

The stocky robot obligingly walked away, while his opponents glared uncertainly at Rods, to pick up Suzanne’s bag and stand by her again.

“Are you alright?” asked Suzanne.

The robot looked up at her – he was a little shorter than the new cruise director – and his face might have registered surprise if it had been capable of displaying emotion.

“Fine,” he said.

“Were you hurt when they hit you?”

“No… armored.”

Another man arrived from behind Ben’s two assistants. He was thickset, his balding head hidden under a peaked cap, and he carried a badge prominently on the vest pocket of his coat. The club man hurriedly dropped his weapon.

“Stan!” said Rods. “My friends and I were just having some fun.”

“So, I see,” said the newcomer. “Geoff, pick up that whatever it is and toss it over here.”

Geoff picked up the club he had just dropped without comment and tossed to the lawman, who put it against the side of the wall at an angle and stomped on it, smashing it in two. He threw the pieces back.

“You know the rules,” he told Geoff. “Lucky for you I can’t be bothered with any paperwork tonight. Now what about Ben there? It’s too cold for a nap.”

“We were having a friendly tussle.”

“Is he still breathing?”

“Yep.”

“Shame! You two,” said Stan to the two men who were sidling away, “take Ben back to his cubicle”.

“Bane of my life, that man,” muttered Stan, as Ben was dragged past, having recovered enough to glare at the trader and police officer. “What’s that bit of metal, you’ve got?” He nodded at the plate Rods had taken from Ben.

“Just something for repairs to Igor.”

“And you’re carrying it here?”
“I get enthusiastic,” said Rods handing the plate to Igor who put it in a pouch concealed in his trench coat. “What brings you down here, anyway? You hear Ben was prowling around?”

“It wasn’t that. I got a complaint about a young woman stealing a coat from a remainder bin.”

Both men turned to look at Suzanne who was doing her best to hide behind Igor.

“The missing coat is black, I am told. The same color as the coat worn by that young lady.”

Rods sighed. “My new cruise director.”

“Another cruise director?”

“Everyone’s a critic. Matt forced her on me. Her sister was in the Dawn Treader. She teaches English. Her mum was a high school principal, dad a captain in the navy. He says I need to go respectable.”

“That’s right, he asked me about it, and I agreed.” Stan jabbed his index finger at Rods. “I also come down to tell you the same thing. You and The Max are key here; vital even, and times are hard. A few of the traders asked me to speak to you about Sylvia.”

“A few?”

“Well, all of them. Time to stop recruiting from Stacey’s and keep your hands off the cruise directors. Matt said this girl, the one behind Igor I take it, has personality.”

“So much so that he stuck me with her bar bill.”

“See, she’s already helping trade here. Now if we can work out this problem of the coat.”

They both looked at Suzanne who was trying to pretend she wasn’t there, and that she wasn’t freezing.

Rod sighed. “All of them?”

“Had a meeting. Everyone was happy to hear that she’d fallen from favor. She is somewhere far away from here?”

“Mining colony; Ozarks III.”

“She might’ve preferred my jail. She had confederates?”

“Maybe she did, but I wouldn’t concern yourself over the details.”

“Uh huh. A lot of police work is details. Are those details going to be a problem in the future?”

“Doubt it. They’ve moved on a long way, as I understand it.”

“Not sure I want to know any more.”

“I wasn’t planning on saying anything more.”

“Whatever – now the coat.”

“The traders had a meeting about Sylvia?” said Rods.

“Everyone complained.”

Rods sighed again. “Tell ‘em I’ll stick with Suzanne - that’s her name. WHose coat is it?”

“Jenny’s.”

“Jenny! She owes me money. Tell her to take the cost of the jacket off the amount owed and we’ll settle up next time around. Once she hears that she’ll shut up.”

Stan shrugged. “Problem solved. You leaving now? With Sylvia out of the way Caitlin will want you for dinner. The invitation would extend to Suzanne.”

“I’m in no mood to be told anything more about Sylvia. Next time round, I’ll be happy to. But that reminds me.” He took a small parcel out of his greatcoat pocket. “I was going to leave this at the port office for you and Caitlin. It’s medicine for William’s skin.”

Stan ripped open the package, read the box’s label and nodded.

“How much do we owe you?”

“Invoice is in the package. I talked them down to a 10 per cent mark up.”

“Stars!” said Stan after seeing the amount. “We don’t have this just now.”

“Let’s sort it out when I swing by again; there may be a discount for dinner. May not be for more than a week.”

“Done.”

Stan walked up to an apprehensive looking Suzanne and touched his cap. “Congratulations on your new job, Madam.” Suzanne’s apprehensive look turned into a sweet smile. “I’m Stan Williams, colony police officer. If you do have any trouble with Rods,” he said loudly, “you can come to me”.

“Oh great,” muttered Rods.

“Thank you,” said Suzanne then scuttled after Rods who had stalked off. “Nice to meet you.”

Officer Stan waved.

 

 

Suzanne’s first impression of the James Clerk Maxwell was of the spaceship’s size. She had been travelling in star ships for weeks but had been literally herded onto each vessel then held in cramped quarters, forbidden to go beyond a set area. She had never seen the outside of the ships. But the docking airlock which connected to the Maxwell was partly transparent. Suzanne could see she was to be a cruise director, whatever that might mean, of a grey ship that was three stories tall and maybe 150 meters long. She craned her head to try to read the markings on the side.

Rods gave her no time to take in the sights. He punched in a key code, took a retinal scan and led them into a narrow airlock.

“Incoming Max,” Rods called out. “A new cruise director.”

“So soon!” The voice was female.

“Will everyone stop commenting. Her name is Suzanne Clark. We’ll clear her, then you can brief her on her duties.”

“Very well.”

“Was that the ship AI?” asked Suzanne.

“This ship is the James Clerk Maxwell – scientist who first wrote out the equations for electromagnetic waves - so the AI is Max. Now…” He unhooked a folding table from the bulkhead and banged it down in front of Suzanne so hard that she jumped, then pulled a screen on an extendable arm out of the bulkhead. “One of the main concerns of my life is people trying to jack the ship.”

“You mean pirate the ship?”

“We say jacking and I’m not just crazy about the issue I’m full-blown paranoid and I’m in a bad mood, and the last person to try jacking the ship was your predecessor. You’re coming through the crew quarters so that means a full security check. Your pack; let’s see it. Dump it on the table. Also, your shoes, and socks. And I want to be able to see your hands at all times.”

Suzanne complied. Rods spread her meagre possessions on the table, ran a hand scanner over them, then scanned the heels of the shoes. She handed over her jacket – at least it was warmer in the airlock - and Rods checked the pockets, then scanned it.

“Thirty credits!” said Rods, finding a price tag. “I had to buy this so that Stan wouldn’t haul you off to his cell.”

“You were talking about the jacket. I was freezing and I thought it had been dumped. It was just on this pile.”

“That’s Jenny’s shop. Piles of stuff. It came off what she owes me, but you could have shop lifted something cheaper.”

Rods scowl made Suzanne think better of smiling.

Rods checked the screen which, Suzanne later found out, showed the view from a whole-person scanner. “Okay, the rest. Pants, top and underwear on the counter.”

“What?”

“You heard me! Come on, come on. Oh, for stars sake!” He grabbed a large towel from a locker beside the table and threw it at her, hitting her so hard, that she staggered back. “Tuck that under your chin to preserve your modesty, but I still have to see your hands. The main scanner shows that you’ve got stuff in your panties. Let’s see it all.”

“There’s nothing worth seeing.”

“I’ll decide if it’s nothing.”

Suzanne did as she was told but felt her eyes getting wet. She threw her top on the table, trying not to cry. She did not want to cry in front of Rods, but she was tired and hungry, and upset that she should be reduced to this, and that secrets would be revealed. When she dropped her panties, a small item fell to the floor with tinkle; a card fell with a click and another item fluttered.

“Grab those Igor.” The robot moved forward, extended one arm by several times its length to pick up the objects and placed them on the table.

Suzanne sobbed.

“For star’s sake. You know the Replicant in that film misquotes Blake.”

Suzanne looked up, wiping her eyes.

“Where the angel goes up, he says down. The original line is fiery the angels rose.”

“So, it’s fiery the angels fell?”

“Yes, fell.” Rods picked up the item that had tinkled – a ring - with a small laser pointer he also kept in the locker.

“This looks like an engagement ring?” He did not add the adjective “cheap” but he thought it. “Are you engaged?” She nodded. “And where is your fiancé now?”

“Earth Station.”

“Does he know you’ve taken a job in a distant part of the galaxy?”

“He knows I had to come out here. He’s waiting for me.”

“So how come I had to make you strip to get this?”

“The girls I met suggested it. Said you’d be much more likely to take me.”

“Who were the girls?”

“A Stacy and an Anne. Anne had red hair and …”

“I know them,” snapped Rods.

“They said you were a gentleman.”

“I am – a gentleman who does not like to charge round the galaxy with other people’s fiancés. There have been past misunderstandings. But as it happens, considering the way that Matt and Stan have been lecturing me, it’s just as well. Put the ring back on when we’ve finished and keep it on.”

He picked up the item that had fluttered. “A twenty-credit note. Don’t often see the actual paper. Did you steal this too?”

She shook her head.

“Emergency money.”

She nodded.

“Wouldn’t have got you far.” He dropped it on the table. “And last item is an Earth Station identity card which has a different name entirely and…” Rods looked at the photo and then at Suzanne twice. “This isn’t your photo. You’re the same physical type but it’s not you. What’s going on?”

“I swapped with another girl who had to come out to a place called Basher’s Find,” said Suzanne in a small voice. “She was picked to go there but didn’t want to go.”

“That’s how you managed to get all the way out here on no money?”

Another nod.

“But you got off here.”

“Slipped out. No real controls on the gates.”

“But how did you get on the ship in the first place? Don’t these cards have biometric checks?”

She shook her head. They just do bar scans for the people coming out to these colonies.

“I’m not surprised. Basher’s Find is no career move.”

“Bad is it?”

“Penal colony that has room to take people. Fortunately for you I can sort something out with the managers. One less person isn’t going to bother them.” He dropped the card on the table. “Max!

“Yes.”

“Suzanne has standard entry to the crew quarters. Cabin three. Turn off surveillance in the entry airlock for three minutes.” He turned to Suzanne. “Get dressed. The cameras are off. And put the table back up. Igor will lead you through. Igor wait outside for our cruise director.”

She reached out to grab her underwear. He turned to go.

“But wait, what am I supposed to do as cruise director?”

“You job will be to deal with the creatures that I hate and fear the most in all the galaxy.”

“Goodness, what creatures?” said Suzanne trying to imagine what in all of space her new employer would find so horrible.

“Passengers! They whine; they want me to fix the coffee machine; they try jacking the ship. I don’t like them. Dealing with them is your job, and good luck to you. We pick up a new load in about three days – about 40 of the horrors, I think.”

“Forty people! Three days! But where am I to put them? Am I to feed them anything?” Suzanne had imagines of a nameless horde of passengers mobbing her, demanding food. She had never even Hosted a dinner party – a point she had not mentioned in her job interview.

“It’s all in the files, all written with newcomers in mind, just ask Max when you get to your cabin. She will have the schedules to follow; just don’t bother me about the passengers unless they start jacking the ship.”

He left, slamming the airlock hatch.

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

Igor took Suzanne’s bag when she emerged from the airlock and led the way down a short corridor to a lift, which took them up two decks. Less stressed, Suzanne could take note of her surroundings. She could see that the fittings bore signs of wear. The lift, which took them to the top, or A deck, which contained the crew quarters, functioned well enough but the carpet was threadbare. Mirrors in the lift had blotches on the edges. But then Suzanne could not recall seeing carpet on the floors of any of the ships she had been in and had never used any lifts in them.

“This seems like a large ship,” she said to Igor. “How many crew are there?”

“Two humans; two robots – and Max.”

“What? So just me and Rods and you and another robot.”

“IRA – Integrated Robotic Assistant. We do the work; you tell us what to do.”

“I do?” It had not occurred to Suzanne that she might have assistance. But what was she going to do with this assistance? Then the lift doors opened, and she forgot, for the moment, her new concerns about being a cruise director.

In past Eras, a real estate agent would have described the crew quarters as compact. A better adjective was “cramped”. But to Suzanne, used to the overcrowding of Earth Station and to sharing bunks on transports, it was palatial. Igor showed her to a tiny cabin fitted with two bunks, with a postage-stamp sized en-suite, tiny closet and fold down workstation which, she quickly realized, was all hers. It was acres of space. It was paradise. She quickly found she could fold up the top bunk for additional vistas. She thought of Richard, her absent fiancé, and how privacy was all but impossible on Earth Station. He had to come out. Then her stomach rumbled. An inquiry about food and meals led her to a small but well-stocked galley with a programmable auto-cook unit. She made herself a sandwich, eating half of it then and there, then found some biscuits on which she spread a substance described as butter on the container but would have not been within many light years of an actual cow. There was juice. Suzanne left some.

Then she noticed the background music. She was used to constant, quiet background music at Earth Station and on the ships she had been in, but that had been anodyne – designed to soothe. This music was different.

 

I polished up that handle so carefully

That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navy

He polished up that handle so carefully

That now he is the Ruler of the Queen's Navy

 

Suzanne had been only vaguely aware of the comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan before setting foot in The Max but soon found herself humming along. Occasionally Mozart or the likes of Handel’s Messiah intruded, but sooner or later the background music returned to Gilbert & Sullivan.

 

As office boy I made such a mark

That they gave me the post of a junior clerk

I served the writs with a smile so bland

And I copied all the letters in a big round hand

 

He copied all the letters in a big round hand

 

I copied all the letters in a hand so free

That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navy

 

He copied all the letters in a hand so free

That now he is the Ruler of the Queen's Navy

 

The James Clerk Maxwell was a different ship, Suzanne decided.

“Where is Rods,” Suzanne asked Igor. The robot had followed Suzanne back to her cabin – after the new cruise director had decided not to eat in the small, deserted dining room (wardroom, she was later told stiffly, not dining room) – and stood around, apparently for want of anything else to do.

“Bridge.”

“Can I see him for a moment?”

“Not to be disturbed. He said he will space both of us if I let you anywhere near him.”

“Space us? What is that?”

“Put in airlock while in space and outer door opened.”

“Goodness! Was he serious?”

“Lift off in half an hour,” said Max, unexpectedly chiming into the conversation as she sometimes did. In the ship, Igor was partially an extension of Max, but shipboard announcements came direct from Max. “You have to strap in.”

“Where do I strap in?”

“In your chair. Plates and cups to be returned and stored.”

“Got it.” Suzanne thought for a moment. “What is Rods’ routine?” she asked Igor. “Where will he be that I can also be, so I can also speak to him without being put in an airlock?”

“Exercise in rec room, B deck, 7AM ship time.”

“So, the floor – I mean deck – below this one. I take the lift down?”

“Ladder at bridge end of passage.”

“Ladder?”

“Ladder – never stairs, ladder.”

Suzanne looked at the digital clock with analogue display inset in the wall. She would study her cruise directing files for a while and then have time for a few hours’ sleep in a bed that was all hers.

 

The newly appointed cruise director for The James Clerk Maxwell was at the ship’s rec room on the dot of 7AM, still missing sleep but determined to take the next step in relations with her new employer. The area was crammed with equipment that she recognised only from old films. It included a punching bag, a weightlifting bench and a treadmill. On one wall was a visual display of the ship’s course, direction and time to the next destination – Fin’s Reef, wherever that was, in two hours. Screens with that display were all over the ship. On the other was a picture of a younger Rods having his hand held up by a referee in a boxing ring. Rods was already there, skipping rope with impressive speed, as Suzanne had to admit. He had a T-shirt on, but his obvious muscles were a world away from the men she had known on Earth Station with no room for any exercise apart from hunching over a computer screen. This included her own fiancé, she reluctantly conceded to herself. Rods visibly started when he saw her and then glared. Suzanne dived for the nearest piece of equipment, which happened to be the treadmill. She wanted to make it appear that she, too, was there for the exercise.

A pair of goggles with a cable attached hung on a bracket, but she had no idea what they were for. Instead, after puzzling over the controls, she hit start. The machine hummed and she found herself running full tilt. Like the men she knew, Suzanne was also badly out of condition, and being cooped up on spaceships for weeks had not helped. In a moment she was puffing. She bent over to see how to slow the machine down, stumbled and fell and was flung off with an “eek”, forcing Rods to stop skipping and jump back.

“If you’re going to make a nuisance of yourself,” he growled, putting the skipping rope away, “you might as come over here and hold the punching bag for me.”

While the trader turned away to pull on practice boxing gloves Suzanne picked herself up, still puffing from her exertion on the treadmill, and eyed the punching bag apprehensively. She was of average height but, in her fevered imagination, the bag seemed bigger than her. Suzanne tentatively approached the bag, then wrapped her arms tightly around it.

Rods turned around and his jaw dropped.

“What are you doing?”

“You said to hold the bag for you.”

“I meant brace yourself against it, so I can hit it without it swinging, not get intimate with it.”

“Oh!”

“Let go of the bag; put your shoulder into it there.” He put his hand on her shoulder and pushed it down to the right place. His hands were strong but not rough, Suzanne decided. “Now put your feet back.”

Suzanne closed her eyes.

The first time Rods hit the bag she almost fell over. The second time she was flung onto the weightlifting bench. Suzanne picked herself up straight away, trying not to look at Rods, who notably did not ask whether she was hurt, and braced herself again, eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted.

Nothing happened. After a few seconds, she opened one eye and looked up at Rods who had one gloved hand on his side and another on the bag looking down at her. Abruptly he put his head back and barked, or at least Suzanne thought he barked. She was reminded of videos she had seen of seals on Earth calling to one another. Then she realized that the spaceman was laughing. He could be heard through most of the ship.

“Arf! Arf! Arf! When you fell off the treadmill… Arf! Arf! Arf! Then you… then you… were hugging the bag… Arf! Arf! Arf!” Rods lent back against the bulkhead, holding his stomach. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment, gasping. “I’ve been mean to you haven’t I?”

Suzanne nodded, looking sheepish.

“Sports are not really your thing, are they?”

She shook her head.

“Come over to the treadmill.” He pulled off one glove, still chuckling, and adjusted the controls. “This ship is more than 30 years old, and the treadmill was installed second-hand at the time it was built, so it’s one of the few pieces of equipment Max can’t control. You must adjust the speed here. It was set to my sprint speed so no wonder you fell off.” He chuckled. “Put on the goggles.” He handed her the equipment she had put aside. “This control gives you different views.”

“Views?”

“Put on the goggles. Adjust the strap. Push the on button. There.” He guided her hand. Three dimensional views of an ocean side path appeared. The images were a little cruder than the technology she was used to on Earth Station but unlike the viewing pods she had used previously, Suzanne found that she could step out and the path felt real under her feet.

“The tread changes. If you go up it will have a slope. Amazing it still works after all this time.”

“It is amazing.” Suzanne turned towards the sound of Rod’s voice only to see ocean and nearly losing her balance. “There’s nothing like this on Earth Station. No room.”

“The ladies I’ve had aboard have all liked the treadmill.”

“Hmm!”

“I’ve put you on 15 minutes. Rest and repeat. I expect you to be up to an hour on the toughest route real soon, or I’ll have Igor haul you down here and hold you on the track.”

“Slave driver!”

“You bet. If we do find your sister’s ship and we have to be active for some reason, I don’t want you puffing around behind me. Anyway, it’ll tighten up your figure.”

“And does my figure need tightening?” said Suzanne, suspiciously. She turned her head again and again nearly lost her balance.

“Keep jogging, Cruise.”

 

“Anomaly detected.”

Suzanne ripped off the goggles and paused the machine 10 minutes into her cycle. One cruise display had turned into a Nav screen showing a dot inside a red circle and a set of numbers that meant nothing to Suzanne but something to Rods.

“Doesn’t look very big, Max,” said Rods, who had been hitting the bag, now firmly braced by Igor. “But let’s take a closer look. Helm six degrees starboard, two degrees below true.”

“Six degrees starboard, two degrees below true, aye.” Suzanne felt the ship turn and dip but then her world returned to normal. The ETA for the next port of call, which she knew to be Fin’s Reef from the schedule Max had shown her last night, adjusted by half an hour.

“Could it be the Dawn Treader?” she asked.

“If it is, it’s in completely the wrong chunk of space and moving in the wrong direction, and your sister is dead, but like I said, we’ll take a closer look.”

Suzanne risked another question.

“We’ll be half an hour later for Fin’s Reef, is that going to be a problem? The schedule says no passengers.”

“It’s home base. Three couples got stranded there when the company they were working for went broke. I bring food in and ship the ore out, they let me store stuff there and stay if I have to shut the engines off for any reason. The other ports charge me for the privilege of laying over. Might be some news. One of the women is very heavily pregnant.”

“Pregnant!” No births were permitted on Earth Station – not for any ideological reasons but because the place was simply too crowded.

“Foolish, I thought, but I guess their animal natures got in the way.”

“Why foolish? Do they have room?”

“Heaps of it, but they don’t have the system capacity to support more than six and it’s not set up for water production or food vats. It’s a non-starter as a colony, and there’s no place for a family to go. That’s where we could use your sister’s El Dorado. We could move everyone there. Now, get back to your jogging, and add 10 minutes for pestering me.”

After exercise and a shower in which she was allowed to linger – luxury – and being told that the anomaly was lifeless debris, Suzanne sat at the tiny table in her room eating breakfast and looking through floor plans. The Max had been intended solely to carry ore, but its upper bay, which connected directly through a door a few paces from Suzanne’s cabin, had been pressurised and converted to carry mixed general cargo and passengers. The modifications included slots to install movable partitions to create a series of cabins and common areas, depending on numbers. The neophyte cruise director found that she could choose from a series of floor plans, modify them according to need, and then transform the area again for another passenger run. With guidance from Max, and some juggling with floor plans she came up with a configuration in which the couples and families, two had children, had their own cabins, and everyone had a bunk.

Food consisted of pre-packaged meals which earlier generations would have dismissed as airline food – in fact, it was airline food passed its best-by date. But those taking passage to crowded mining colonies in the Rim were in no position to be fussy, as Suzanne knew too well. There were facilities for heating the meals. No alcohol was served outside the crew quarters, but there would be coffee, cordial and juices. Images of enraged passengers chasing her around the ship faded. Suzanne became absorbed. There were endless details. Sheets were not changed for short journeys, but towels were. Bathrooms had to be cleaned. Ick! Igor and Ira would do the actual work, but Suzanne would have to check and inspect. Did she have to inspect the four common bathrooms? That could be done remotely through visual feeds from the two robots.

Suzanne was aware that the ship had come out of phase space and was close to Fin’s Reef. But she was still intent on her work when Max spoke.

“Cruise director to the bridge. Urgent!”

Cruise director? she sounds important thought Suzanne, before recollecting that she was the cruise director. She charged out of her cabin thinking that she could not possibly be in any trouble yet, as she hadn’t had a chance to do anything, and in her confusion turned left, almost reaching the passenger/cargo hold hatch before realising her mistake. She raced back up the corridor to the bridge where she had not previously been.

“Took you long enough,” said Rods, who was sitting in the captain’s chair. The bridge was a dizzying array of screens full of displays that Suzanne did not understand. One group showed views of a gangway and hatches and the passenger area. Then there was the bridge window with its real time, direct view of space. Suzanne had spent weeks in ships getting to this patch of space without being able to see out of any of them. Now she was transfixed by an array of stars with a small planet in the foreground. Rods later told her that being able to see out of the ship the size of the Max was of little help in navigation or docking. The bulk of it was computer work and checking readouts. But it was still nice to be able to see out.

“When you’ve finished staring. Cruise.”

“Sorry, I was told I wasn’t allowed on the bridge.”

“Later! Sit there.” He pointed to a chair, one of the three on the bridge, set behind the two command chairs. “And buckle up.”

Suzanne did as she was told, as another voice spoke from the screen in front of Rods.

“Who was that?”

“Just briefing my crew, captain.”

“I’ll repeat myself. This is Lieutenant Commander Dyson, captain of the Earth Ship The Adams. Prepare to be boarded.”

“I was under the impression that the Earth did not exist as a political entity any more, Captain Dyson.”

“Stand by to receive boarding party.”

“Fin’s Reef control has also told me that you’ve been asking after The Max. I’m flattered that you’ve come all this way to jack me. But try any nonsense and I’ll switch on the phase drives.”

“Stop any maneuvers, or we’ll blow you apart.”

“Tough talk, captain, but I have detection equipment. The moment you start prepping your lasers I’m outta here.”

“You are required by law to submit to a search.”

“Earth Station’s law hasn’t been relevant out here for years, captain, and I’m not registered. But I’ll tell you what, rather than you tell your superiors I refused a search you can send four people across – provided they’re unarmed, and they submit to being scanned head to toe.”

“That’s unacceptable. Stand by to receive a boarding party.”

“You can take my offer, or I leave.”

There was a long silence.

“Unarmed then,” snapped Dyson. “Come closer, we’ll send the cutter.”

“I like the distance I’m at, captain. Your cutter will have to make it.”

The captain cut the call.

“You’re defying the navy?” asked Suzanne, both awed and frightened, mostly frightened because she feared all this meant she would lose her nice room.

“This isn’t the navy of your dad. They may have uniforms and the ships have insignias, but they haven’t been paid for months and now basically they’re official pirates. Most of their armament probably doesn’t work anymore, but they wouldn’t use it anyway, because they want the Max. This ship is more than 30 years old… no offence Max.”

“None taken.”

“…And hasn’t been refitted in 10 years which is way too long for a space-going vessel with a nuclear power plant, and they still want it because it’s one of the few things out here they can take with a show of legality that’s moveable and worth anything. That’s how far the navy of your dad – my navy – has fallen.”

“But you’re allowing them to board?” said Suzanne, thinking that she still might lose her cabin.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to let them jack us. The only reason I’m allowing anyone on board in the first place is because I don’t want them to report I refused a search, and to delay them. While all this is going on I’m falling into Fin’s Reef which has defenses on its port. Just remember those guys won’t give two straws about your sister, and just want to sell The Max for whatever they can get.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stay put.” He spoke into the comms. “Igor, tool up and go to the main airlock.”

Suzanne watched as a small dot on one screen, which Rods pointed out to her, grew to be a naval cutter, as they orbited above the world of Fin’s reef. Rods exchanged comments with Fin’s Reef base control and typed out a note.

Just as she was working up the courage to ask what he was writing, he told her to look at the screen to her left.

“I’ll send it out to everyone before we dock anywhere. It’ll save explanations.”

 

She read;
 

This is introducing Suzanne Clark, the new cruise director of The Max. Officials on Lucifer III put her forward as a replacement, after Sylvia’s departure. She is an English teacher with a fiancé on Earth Station out here looking for her sister who went missing with the Dawn Treader. Please make her welcome.

 

“Put her forward?”

“Sounds better than being forced on me because the last flight director turned out to be a conniving, scheming, ship jacking bitch.”

“I suppose… Where did the picture come from?”

“The Max takes pictures of all visitors to The Max when they enter. No exceptions.”

“Can I change it?”

“Suit yourself but wait until our little drama is finished.”

“You didn’t say anything about why Sylvia departed or where she went to.”

“Nope.”

“You didn’t put her in an airlock, did you?”

“No, but she didn’t ask so many questions.”

After that, Suzanne watched in silence as the naval cutter, she recognized as an older model shuttle, maneuvered to link with The Max. She knew that only a few outdated ships on patrol duties had survived the massacre at Cross Roads. The cutter docked and the action shifted to the airlock, on another screen, where Igor was waiting. This was larger than the forward airlock where Suzanne had been made to strip, but the layout was the same. Igor waited right in front of the airlock hatch, carrying what seemed to Suzanne to be a ferocious-looking weapon with a massive barrel and round magazine.

“Okay,” said Rods, “they haven’t tried to attach anything to the hull. The sloop is maintaining distance. Max, shut down all external comms – just leave the comm link to the sloop open.”

“Done,” said Max.

“They’ll try to hack Max and force the airlock open at the same time, once the seal is made. Max, when the hatch opens it is to lock at first position. Igor, present your weapon through the gap.”

“Aye! Aye!”

“Is he really going to fire the gun there?”

“Fires rubber bullets – they sting but they won’t break the hull. Designed for close encounters aboard spaceships.

“Put Igor’s view on screen 12.”

Suzanne saw one screen change to show the hatch to the main airlock from Igor’s point of view. As she watched, the light on the hatch locking mechanism turned green and the hatch swung open, then stopped. She heard a muffled thud; someone on the other side yelped and then swore fluently. Igor looked around the partially opened hatch, gun at the ready. On the screen Suzanne could see a naval petty officer in a bullet proof jacket rubbing his shoulder. He was also holding a special spaceship gun.

Another man jumped into Igor’s view pointing a shotgun and shouting “drop it!”, making Suzanne recoil.

“The robot is armored,” said Rods, speaking to them through Igor. “Gentlemen, I am prepared to humor the navy, but the deal is no weapons. If you want to come in, toss the hardware.”

“We’re entitled to board and search,” snarled the petty officer.

“Then board and search, but no weapons. Comply or I’ll break the docking connection.” Reluctantly the two men put their weapons down. “How many are coming aboard?”

“Three,” said the petty officer.

“Quite a crowd. You first and alone. Squeeze through the opening. If the two of you try to come together, you’ll find out about the robot’s other tricks.” Rods switched channels. “Max, Igor will cover them with his gun.”

They watched while the three navy hands – one petty officer, a male rating and a female rating – were scanned. They were made to surrender two knives, one small pistol and a packet of unidentified white powder, all of which Rods insisted be put back inside the cutter’s airlock.

“It’s not fair,” said Suzanne, when Rods scanned the slim, young female rating. “You made me strip right down.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m going to turn my back on you at some point. I don’t intend to turn my back on these guys at all.”

The inspection team looked cursorily around the corridors followed by Igor. The empty hold was unpressurised so they could not get into it. They demanded access to the container carrying fresh vegetables in the stern of A deck and got it, then they wanted to get into the crew quarters. By that time, Rods had gone to the armory – a locker beside Suzanne’s cabin and come back with a long, business-like rod, which he said was a cattle prod.

“Are there any cattle in this sector of space?”

“Not that I know of, but it’s amazing what you find in the remainder bins in some places,” he said.

Suzanne wasn’t quite sure what a cattle prod was supposed to do, but she didn’t like the look of it.

“One at a time, people,” said Rods to the navy personnel on the other side of the crew quarter’s hatch.

Suzanne suddenly noticed the ship’s soundtrack. She found that she could shut it out entirely at times, like all the music that she had heard on ships coming out, but at other times it came crowding back. It was Gilbert & Sullivan again.

 

With constabulary duties to be done, to be done

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, happy one.

“The deal is we all come in,” said the petty officer.

“The deal is one at a time. You first. You can keep the hatch open so you guys can see each other. Anyone follows you in and the robot does his stuff.

He turned to Suzanne: “I want you to come out with me and stand behind me. I don’t want us to be separated. Remember, if the navy guys get hold of the ship they’ll have no interest in looking for your sister.”

“I understand.”

Rods confronted the petty officer in the crew quarters companionway, holding his prod like a rifle.

“Who is the other person?” asked navy. He was a tall, heavy set man with a round, unshaven face and a hint of a tattoo on his neck. He kept his fists clenched as if he expected to use them at any moment.

Suzanne poked her head out from behind Rods long enough to say “I’m the cruise director” then ducked back.

“I see. Pretty cruise director for a ship with no passengers.”

“Don’t worry we’ll get some passengers soon. Max, open all internal doors in the crew quarters.” The doors slid open, and the petty officer made a show of looking through the rooms.

“You have a separate sick bay?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Don’t suppose you got any papers.”

“Not for years. The inspection is a courtesy. We’re not doing anything you guys are interested in.”

“Except a convicted drug smuggler is operating an unregistered ship,” said the petty officer.

Rods noted he was edging closer and tensing.

“Sure, on technical stuff, you’ve got us a lot of ways.”

“And carrying passengers. The presence of a cruise director is enough to show that.”

“No argument there.”

Rods expected the petty officer to jump, but he did not expect the big man to be quite so fast or to have a small knife in his right hand. He blocked the knife thrust with the probe but could not bring the probe’s point around to bare skin. The two men pushed against each for a few seconds, too close for kicking. At the same time, the male rating jumped onto Igor’s back and tried to grab the robot’s gun. The female rating kicked at the robot, ineffectually. Suzanne dived through the open hatchway into the wardroom, out of the way.

Igor, who had a clear field of fire at Rods’ opponent, and ignoring the rating’s attempts to grab the weapon, shot the petty officer twice in the back. The man screamed and fell away. Rods dragged his prod clear and touched it to the man’s skin. He convulsed and went quiet. Igor turned abruptly, elbow out, and threw off the rating on his back.

“Inspection is over,” said Rods. “Igor, drag my friend here away, and escort everyone back to the airlock. Still with us, cruise director?”

“Still here,” said Suzanne from the wardroom floor.

Rods then thought to pick up the knife used by the petty officer, which turned out to be a form of plastic. Although there was no metal to detect, the shape should still have been picked up. Rods went through navy’s pockets to find the sheath – a decorative slip of plastic designed as a souvenir with the word Moscow on it and a picture of the Kremlin of that distant city. Once sheathed, the blade outline did not show, even to a scanner search. Ingenious! By that time, Igor had dragged away the petty officer’s body – there would not be any permanent damage – leaving Rods with the knife. Spoils of war.

“How long since you guys got paid?” he called down the corridor.

The female rating hesitated, glanced at her male colleague and then said: “six months, a bit more”.

Rods gave the knife to Suzanne showing her its design and said that as part of the job she should keep it with her at all times. She took it thinking that life was becoming considerably rougher.

“At least there’ll no need for it at Fin’s Reef,” the trader said.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

When The Max docked at Fin’s Reef Rods sent Suzanne out first, ostensibly to deliver a trolley load of assorted items in crates to the main store room, but also to see whether he was in trouble on various fronts – whether the behavior of the last cruise director had caused angst in the colony, and for missing the birth of the new baby girl, Emily. The sick bay of The Max was better than the in-colony facilities and had been expected to be available for the birth. As it happened the trouble with the previous cruise director had delayed him and Emily had been a few days early. To fulfill her mission, Suzanne only had to walk beside robot crew member Ira, pulling the delivery trolley, until they came to a woman with dark shoulder-length hair walking up and down beside a stack of crates, with a new baby on her shoulder. She looked distracted.

“Hello Suzanne,” she whispered. “I just got the message. I’m Carol and this is Emily.”

“Emily is perfect!” exclaimed Suzanne peeping at the baby’s face. “I never get to see new babies. They just aren’t allowed at Earth Station.”

“Lord, that makes things difficult for you and your fiancé.”

“It does. I had no idea what we would do, but now I want Richard and my mum to come out here.”

“Richard is your fiancé? We can chat in a moment. I want to go to the bathroom, the others are busy, and Emily won’t let me put her down. She starts crying.”

“Maybe I could hold her for a while?”

“Let’s try.”

Emily was gently switched from Carol’s shoulder to Suzanne’s and, after a brief wail, the baby decided that Suzanne’s shoulder was comfortable enough. Carol gave the double thumbs up and scuttled away. Suzanne was entranced, but she was alone with Emily for just a few moments before a short, youngish woman emerged from a hatchway.

“I’m Brigit,” said the newcomer, lowering her voice for the sake of the baby. “And I see you’ve met the most important person of all.”

“She’s just divine.”

Carol re-emerged from another hatchway, pushing a long-slung trolley with an open box on it that was the baby’s home-made crib.

“We’ll see if she’ll consent to go down in a moment.”

“How old is she – a few days?”

“Just five.”

“Oh my! Rods said you’d want her looked at by the scanners in The Max’s sick bay.”

“Yes, please. She seems healthy enough, but I’d like to go over later.”

“Sure. Rods is very sorry for missing the birth.”

“She was early. It was alarming. But it couldn’t be helped. Come through. We’ll unpack the crates later. We have so few visitors here.”

The ladies adjourned to a common area with chairs and a table. Earlier generations would have called the room small but to Suzanne it was vistas of space.

“We don’t have ‘a few’ visitors here,” said Brigit when they sat down. “We don’t have any at all, or when we do it’s Sylvia. I don’t like to speak ill of your predecessor, but I will.”

“She was alright in her way,” said Carol, hesitantly.

“My dear, let’s not sugar coat, said Brigit, crossing her arms. “She was rubbish. A fast piece no good to anyone, least of all Rods.” Carol looked upset at this blunt analysis but did not respond. “You know she propositioned Andrew.”

“What?”

“Who is Andrew?” asked Suzanne.

“My partner,” said Brigit, “he and Jennifer are helping Rods load the ore. She said she wanted some fast cash.”

“Cash?” said Carol. “But Andrew’s got as much money as the rest of us.”

“He told her that, and that was the last he saw of her. He doesn’t know where she got the idea he had money, and I don’t either.”

“She tried to jack the ship. I think,” said Suzanne.

“Did she?” The two women asked in chorus.

“Is that why she’s gone?” asked Brigit.

“I hope Rods didn’t space her,” said Carol.

“He’s already threatened to space me if I disturb him, but I don’t think he’d actually do it.”

“Automated mining colony most likely,” said Brigit. “She can flash her tits at the android guards there and see how far it gets her. Dreadful places those.”

“Don’t think I’d wish it on anyone,” said Carol.

“We tried to tell Rods she was rubbish,” said Brigit, “but did he listen? Girl shows some cleavage, and they leave their brains behind.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Flashy’s a better term.”

“Very blonde,” added Carol. “But there are so few single women out here. What else is Rods to do but shop at Stacey’s?”

“Except that we have to put up with what he buys,” said Brigit. “But it is a shame – he’s such a lamb.”

“A lamb?” queried Suzanne. “I hadn’t really thought of Rods as a lamb.”

“Bit crusty sometimes,” said Carol, “but he’s really a lamb.”

 

From there the conversation moved to Suzanne’s fiancé, his job as a controller on the docks, to Suzanne’s mother, then to Suzanne’s very recent adventures and the possible fate of the Dawn Treader. The ladies listened in polite silence to Suzanne’s idea that Eve must be stranded on El Dorado if only they could find it.

“I really want El Dorado to exist,” said Carol. “Otherwise, Emily has no place to grow up but here, and this planet has no future.”

“None,” added Brigit.

“But you have heaps of space here. On Earth Station, this would be paradise for three families.”

“I was wondering about moving to Earth Station,” said Carol, “but that’s no good either it seems.”

“No,” said Suzanne emphatically, “no good at all and Emily wouldn’t be allowed. But what’s wrong with here?”

“It needs real investment to turn it into a colony,” said Brigit. “It needs massive upgrades in life support, food production, energy generation and support like medical services. It was never designed for any of that, just as a mining station but we got stranded here when the company we were working for went broke after Crossroads...”

“It seemed like a good deal when we came here,” said Carol.

“.. We’ve rigged up some food vats and the rest we can stretch for the six of us plus Emily but that’s it, unless some other group wants to invest. But ore from the mining colonies is cheap.”

“Three couples plus Emily?”

“That’s right,” said Brigit, “and without Rods and The Max we’d be screwed. He takes the ore out at cost and brings in stuff we need. He keeps gear here and does his repairs.”

“And fixes our equipment if we can’t work it out,” said Brigit.

“If either of those two jacking attempts had worked, we’d be dead,” said Carol.

“Either? The navy was one.”

“The fight on Lucifer III was another. If they could have got Rods down and hurt him, they’d have tried for the Max.”

“The rim can be such a tough place,” said Brigit shaking her head.

“What really worries me now is Emily,” said Carol. “She’ll have no one to play with when she gets older. There are children and babies on the other settlements...”

“And in the penal settlements, poor things…” added Brigit.

“But we can’t buy our way in. We need a place where you can walk on the surface, without getting too much radiation, and be able to breathe so that life support isn’t such a problem. Then everyone would agree to go there. We need El Dorado to be true. We need a planet for Emily.”

“I see,” said Suzanne, “a planet for Emily.”

Now in her crib in another room and not caring yet about these hopes for her future, Emily woke up wanting to be changed and fed.

Meeting the other inhabitants of the colony and general chat meant that it was some time before Suzanne returned to the ship with Carol and Emily in tow. She had barely looked in the sick bay during her brief time aboard The Max, but Carol seemed to know her way around, so she watched. After the med scanner had pronounced Emily to be in good health, Suzanne found Rods in the gym studying a holographic projection of a boxing match.

“Can I accept an invitation to dinner?”

“No problem,” said Rods, “we’re loaded but I always lay over a night here.”

“You’re invited too, of course.”

“Hmm! Have they finished kicking the memory of your predecessor around?”

“Don’t know if they’ve finished,” replied Suzanne cheerfully, “but she’s been kicked all over the mine shift, as they say out here.”

“You go on ahead just in case they want to get back to the subject. I’ll be along before they start serving. If you’ve been invited to dinner, incidentally, you’re already streets ahead of your predecessor.”

“Can I take something?”

“Oh right, um, take some of the vegetables you were raving about, and there‘s a proper cot for Emily they wanted and I forgot to send, and a couple of toys. Max knows where it is. It’s my present for the baby.”

“You know, Brigit and Carol think you’re a lamb.”

“A lamb? I’ve been compared to animals before but not to a lamb.”

 

When the crew of The Maxwell and the colonists were all wedged around the communal dining table, the conversation turned to the missing Dawn Treader.

“You know Rod has a list of possible planets they might have been going to,” said Jennifer, the third woman in the tiny colony.

“You do? But I haven’t seen it,” said Suzanne.

“Things have been busy since you came,” said Rods, “but it’s on the system, with that stuff your sister sent. Just ask Max for it.”

“I’ve seen the list, the quote and the poem but couldn’t make any headway,” said Andrew, partner to Carol, a thin man with the air of a scholar. “I’ll send you what I’ve done, but it won’t help you much.”

“You said they were going to Bell’s Curve,” said Geoff, Brigit’s partner. He was a plumpish, middle-aged man and leader of the group in that he was the only one who knew anything about mining or geology before the group came out there. The three couples got the job because of him. A Jennifer and a Wayne completed the party but did not have much to say for themselves.

“That’s what they told me,” said Rods. “I dunno why they wanted to go there. I even asked that captain, Robin, by link when he was here why they were going to a system with a gas giant, and he muttered something about getting his bearings.”

“What was he like the captain I mean?” asked Suzanne.

“He’s alright personally,” said Rods “and knows his way around a spaceship, I’m pretty sure. His mate, the second in command is Hospers – Rob and Hos. They’re romantic partners too. I met them when I did a couple of long runs two years ago. I was surprised they came out this way, and I was surprised that they didn’t seem to know anything about Bell’s Curve but I think the mention was just smoke.”

“You don’t think they went there?” asked Suzanne.

“No I don’t, and there’s certainly nothing there now. No wreckage, no distress messages. But for the life of me I can’t think where they would have gone.”

“You said jacking also wasn’t likely,” said Brigit.

“The passengers were colonists with their backgrounds checked and a lot of them would have known each other. No strangers. Hoss left us his manifest and passenger list in case he did get into trouble, and I’ve been over them. No obvious jackers or problems. Anyway, if the ship’d been jacked it would have turned up by now. The onboard AI has to be replaced for it to be of any real use so they’ve gotta sell – usually to the Oids or at the Oid planet and I’d have heard about it because they’d want to offer it around. Turn a quick profit. So far, nothing – and something should’ve happened by now, if it’d been jacked.”

 

After dinner Suzanne and Rods walked back to The Maxwell together.

“Can we take a look at a couple of planets on the list, on the next trip?”

“I run a spaceship not a tour bus,” grumbled Rods. “But after we get rid of the next lot of passengers, we can take a look at one that’s not too far from our route.”

“And can we install a spectro-spectrographic analysis package?”

Rods eyed her curiously.

“Is that what you were talking to Geoff about? We discussed installing his software before but it’s too high powered for the Max. It’s a geological package designed to look for minerals, and The Max doesn’t have the high-grade optics for that stuff.”

“He did say he thought he’d adapted a version for use by Max.”

“The Max – the ship is The Max, the AI is just Max – did he now, and he mentioned it to the newly appointed cruise director, rather than the captain?”

“He said he was going to talk to you about it tomorrow. He just didn’t want to say anything at dinner, but he thinks it may be useful in detecting signs of life.”

“Humph!”

They walked on in silence for a few seconds.

“Rods can I work at the bridge workstation instead of my room?”

“Why?” There was a suspicious edge to Rods’ voice.

“There’s more room on the desk and the chair is more comfortable.”

“Humph – suppose it doesn’t matter – but touch any of the controls or keyboards in any of the other control areas and your career as a cruise director will be tragically short.”

“I won’t go near them.”

“That’s what your predecessor said.”

“Oh.”

“Training tomorrow, after breakfast,” said Rods when they got to the passageway outside their cabins.

“Training in what?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Don’t go outside The Max until I do. I set all security systems even here.” Rods opened the door to his own cabin and was gone. Suzanne realized just how tired she was, but first she would look at this list of worlds she had been told about. These included both the local names which mostly came from the imagination of the early explorers, and the official catalogue number.

 

She read:

 

Xeno’s Dive III 9257610

Fermat II 9888392

Everest Folly 9645819

Mickey’s Dive IV 9142891

Suman IV 9557141

Jupiter VIII 9322893

(“Busy system,” thought Suzanne.)

Honmen II 9980672

Schrodinger III 9765813

Porter’s Place II 9874336

Concord Down III 9934221

(“Hmmm,” thought Suzanne. “Blake’s poetry is about the American colonies.”)

Logan II 9546721

George’s Claim 9122445

Getty IV 9399221

Hamish II 9654983

Sabrina III 9224472

 

 

What a collection of names, thought Suzanne. What could Eve have meant?

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

“Okay, so jacking attempts will almost always involve you.”

“They – they will?” said Suzanne alarmed.

It was the next day and they were in the top cargo hold with Igor and Ira setting up partitions around them, according to the floor layout Suzanne had selected.

“That’s right. They’ll try to hack Max through the onboard network connections and at the same time one of them will grab you from behind like this.” Rods grabbed Suzanne around the neck and put a small piece of plastic pipe to her neck. The hold was a gentle one, but when Suzanne tried to push against his arm and turn, she thought that it was like trying to struggle with a tree – or at least what she imagined struggling with a tree must be like. She had never encountered one outside a simulation pod. Rods, for his part, was aware of the softness of her body and her scent but, having so recently made such a fool of himself over a woman, he was not about to make a fool of himself again so soon, and with someone else’s fiancé. He dragged his mind back to the job.

“What should I do?” asked Suzanne, unaware of any of the byplay.

“Nothing. It’s important to do nothing. Don’t struggle or attempt to get away. You can talk to them, however. They’ll be yelling threats into the intercom. Things like” – Rods raised his voice for realism – “‘open the door or I’ll cut her. Open the door or she starts bleeding!’ And they‘ll be really shouting.”

“More than you,” said Suzanne, who felt deafened.

“Way more than me. Maybe they’ll also tell you to shut up and ‘don’t resist and you won’t get hurt’.”

“But can they cut me with that pipe thing you have.”

“Cruise, pay attention. This is just a demonstration tool I keep around. Believe it or not, I don’t want to cut your throat – not yet anyway. No, it’ll be some piece of plastic they’ve smashed to give it a hard edge, or even a toothbrush handle they’ve cut and lightly glued back together before they got on board. So, as I was saying they’ll be yelling stuff like ‘shut up bitch’ to you and ’you want this on your conscience, do you’, into the intercom. ’She’s a real pretty thing’.”

“You said something nice to me.”

“It’s what they’d say, and you don’t thank them. You’re a hostage, remember, and you’ve got something nasty and pointy at your throat. Let’s get with the program.”

“I’m a hostage. Nasty; pointy; alright.”

“Now the ship is being jacked and they’ve got you. They’re saying things like ‘Real shame if I had to cut her man’. And it’d all be loud.”

“I get the picture, but I do nothing.”

“Correct. Just go with him. He may push you towards the door or he may hang back a few paces. The one thing you can do if you want, is to tell him he’s going to die.”

“Is he going to die?”

“Yep. He has just a minute, maybe less, to let you go and throw away the weapon or he dies.”

“But wait, I’m being held tightly by him – aren’t I in danger?”

“Maybe if he moves suddenly, but I have done it before, and the guys died and the cruise directors were unharmed.”

“My many predecessors?”

“Yes, two of your predecessors, in fact. Two attackers down, no cruise director casualties.”

“But how does my attacker die?”

“Never you mind about that, Cruise. The less you know about that the better. You can talk to him, tell him that I’ll never open the door to save you, and you have a fiancé and it’s not me, and we hate each other, or whatever. You can tell him that if he doesn’t release you he dies. Tell him this isn’t a regulated ship. We’re a long way from Zard controlled space. He messes up, we kill him and put the body out the airlock. One less person at the other end, one more vacancy for someone else.”

“You want me to say all that.”

“You won’t be able to say all that. I’m just giving pointers. But if you say something you may feel more comfortable later - ’cause this guy is going to die on top of you. You may want to feel that you tried to save him.”

“I see. I’ll certainly remember the hating part.”

“You’re trying to make a desperate man give up a big-risk gamble, which isn’t likely to happen, but the hating part may help. Assuming it doesn’t work and he dies, you’ll feel his grip go slack. He won’t have time to cut you. Fall to the ground but fall clear so you’re not trapped underneath his body. When that happens all the lights in the hold out here will go off. Jackings always happen at night after we’ve dimmed the living area lights, so there won’t be much light to start with, but by the time you hit the floor it’ll be pitch black.”

“I stay there?”

“No. Whenever you go out into the passenger area you must have these echo - infrared goggles in your pocket. They are kept in the locker by the door. If you forget Max will prompt you, and she won’t let you into the passenger area until they’re in your pocket.”

“I fall to the ground and put on my goggles. Then what do I do?”

“Make for the door and put yourself on the other side of it. As it’s pitch black no one else can see. Igor and I will come out the other way. Igor has infrared vision and I’ll have goggles. Then we sort out the other jackers. Once we’ve cleaned up, and taken away the bodies and prisoners, you come out and reassure the passengers. The crew has full control of the ship after an incident. We will arrive at our destination at the time previously advised. No further details will be given for security reasons but there will be no further events. Go back to sleep.”

“The captain I hate says no further details; we will arrive at our destination as previously advised. Go back to sleep. I can do that.”

“You’re meant to say you hate me to the jackers not the passengers.”

“I’ve just been in a jacking attempt; I’ll be upset; I won’t be thinking straight – but wait, why am I in the passenger section at night in the first place? You said not to come out after dinner unless it’s an emergency.”

“Good point. It will be an emergency. Probably a medical emergency. A woman, or a child maybe down with an unspecified but violent sickness because they’ve been slipped some poison. You’ll think food poisoning.”

“This sounds dire.”

“Only the patient can go through the door into the crew quarters – an exception is a mother with a sick child – and they won’t be able to move beyond the sick bay. Max has lots of tricks up her sleeve to ensure they don’t. But the whole point behind the poisoning is to get you to come out. If they can’t get back inside the crew quarters then they threaten to kill you. We’ll run through it a few times, with me playing the part of the nasty jacker who wants to slit your throat.”

After playing at jacking for an hour or so, Rods took Suzanne off the ship, to a large, mined-out gallery, facing a pile of low-grade ore that was not worth the trouble of the colony to process. He gave her a pistol and earmuffs. Suzanne had seen guns in films, like everyone else, but had never been anywhere near one and did not care for the development.

“Just as I don’t want you panting around in the background if and when we do find your sister, I don’t want to have to break off fighting for my life to show you where the safety catch is,” Rods had said.

“Will we be fighting for our lives?”

“Can’t see how we would be, but I’m not ruling it out, and that means you should know where the safety catch is.”

Suzanne banged away at the ore pile, which she could not fail to miss, with what Rods called a Glock G-20 and then with a lighter, more compact weapon which he called a SIG Sauer. Suzanne was not enthusiastic about pistol shooting, but she was sure that she was better off and certainly a better shot with the lighter weapon.

“If I have to take someone to a fight, Mr. SIG Sauer is my choice,” she told Rods. “He’s cute and easy to handle. I can hit stuff with him.”

“Maybe. Mr. SIG Sauer has superficial attractions, I admit, and he’s fine in his place for precision work, but Mr. Glock is really your choice. I don’t see you shooting much unless you’re up real close. So, you’ll have time for one shot, and then you really want Mr. Glock as your steady, reliable partner.

“The way I see it, you flash that winning smile of yours, let them come up close, maybe a body length, then say ‘get a bang out of this’ and blow them away.”

“Why should I say anything at all?”

“You see people make remarks all the time in films, before or after shooting someone.”

“If I’m going to shoot anybody, I’ll be too horrified to say anything.”

 

When Rods finally released her from training, she went back to her main job of organizing the cruise and, with help from Max and the files, organising the ship for its paying guests. She said a quick goodbye to her new friends on Fin’s Reef, Emily in particular, knowing that the ship’s schedule would take her back there in a week, and worked like a demon on the hop back to Lucifer III. The work paid off. With the partitions in place, the upper hold of the Maxwell looked like the interior of a low-rent passenger liner that might have sailed the oceans in earth’s distant past. There were printed signs pointing the way to the bathrooms – an innovation of Suzanne’s of which Rods approved – plus printed notices in each room explaining how the beds would not be made during the trip, and other notices about the dos and don’ts of being a cruise passenger. Rods glanced in a couple of the rooms and decided that his new cruise director had handled the details of beds, chairs and coffee machines well. There were even plans for a table tennis tournament, using one table stored in the rec room. He walked through to the crew quarters meaning to say something, only to be startled by a whole new Suzanne in the corridor.

“Wow!”

She smiled. “You like it?” She wore a blue skirt, a grey shirt with turned up sleeves, a hostess cap and was wearing makeup for the first time since Rods had known her. She had also turned blonde.

“You look great!”

“You’ve actually said something nice to me.”

“Enjoy the sun while it lasts, Cruise. So where did all this come from?”

“One of my predecessors was my size and left clothes in lockers on C Deck. I also found the blonding agent. Couldn’t do much about the shoes.” She was still wearing her ship-board slip-ons.

“We can find shoes at one of the ports, but there is a problem in that you now look too attractive.”

“That’s a problem?”

“Uh-huh! A few of our passengers are hopping to an all-male mining colony. There was a time when those colonies used to offer young ladies as an incentive to get guys there.”

“Oh.”

“And regular visits from those same young ladies. No one does it now, ‘cause the guys are lucky to even get a berth with Earth Station so crowded, but they’ve heard the stories and they’re hoping. They’re guys. They’re always hoping. And where they’re going they won’t see a real woman for a long time.”

“Do you want me to switch back?”

“No. Igor and I’ll be in the security enclosure.” To take on passengers, Rods set up a small area with a portable scanner the passengers had to walk past. “Any problems and we’ll be there in moments. Igor and I can make them back off.”

“You’re not going to hit anyone in front of the other passengers are you?”

“Me? I’m supposed to be a lamb, remember.”

 

Suzanne was in her fourth day as a cruise director when she met her first passenger. She had no idea what she was getting into when she agreed to work for Rods, but the experience pushed concerns about her fiancé and even the gnawing fears for her sister, into the background for a time. It helped that The Max offered tolerable value for money. Her passengers were getting their own beds and couples even their own, small rooms for the trip – rare for the down rim operators carrying people fleeing Earth Station to anyplace that would take them. There were three other ships operating regularly in the same area of space, Suzanne later discovered, and two of those had taken full advantage of those refugees, and the traders at each port trying to scratch a living. No one in the area would recommend them or deal with them unless they had to. The third, The Kyiv, run by an older husband and wife team was ethical, but The Kyiv was too slow and small to take many passengers.

That left The Max and a full roster for Suzanne’s first hop as a cruise director. Her initial job was to sit at a small table with a screen to check in her passengers in a narrow walkway to The Max’s main airlock. Rods was in his screened off area to her left, with the scanner and temporary door. If the passengers and their luggage checked out, they got through the door to the open airlock hatch.

Suzanne had just processed her third passenger and was enjoying herself, when a shadow fell across the table. Someone grabbed her wrist. It was a gigantic young man with massive arms and shoulders, a spade beard, and small, mean black eyes. Behind him was a string of young men giggling over their leader’s actions. Suzanne had noticed them before but thought they were further back in the queue.

“Hey!” spluttered the passenger who should have been next.

“Now you’re a pretty thing,” said beard. “What’s your name?”

“I’m the cruise director. Let go of my hand.”

“She’s the cruise director, boys,” he called out. “That’s a new name for what you do, isn’t it? I’ve heard about girls out here helping out us lonely miners.”

Suzanne stared at him coldly, fairly sure that Rods was not far away.

“Take your hand away, please,” she said quietly.

“Oh now, come on lady,” said Beard, not moving his hand. “I know the deal here. I need some entertainment.” His friends sniggered.

“You heard the lady!” said Rods. He had emerged from a door in the security enclosure a few paces from Suzanne’s table, with Igor in front.

“Oh no,” said Beard, in mock horror. “The security.” He put his hands up to his shoulders. “Take me away.” His chorus line was, by this time, in a continual state of merriment. The other passengers in the queue looked apprehensive. “Why don’t you and tin pile here vanish, I’m talking to this young lady.” Beard put his hand on the table again, but Suzanne moved hers.

“Igor, bring him.”

Igor extended one hand to grab beard by the right wrist then pulled him towards the enclosure door. Beard’s knowing smile turned into a frown. He tried to pull back only to be yanked almost off his feet.

“You wait until I get in there!” Beard roared, as he was dragged through the door which Rods closed.

“This’ll be good,” sniggered one of the chorus, “Maceman’ll pound that guy to a pulp.”

There was shouting then several dull thuds. The enclosure door burst open and Maceman flew through it, to land beside Suzanne’s table, doubled up in agony, one eye already starting to swell. The chorus line fell abruptly silent, aghast. Rods came out rubbing his right-hand knuckles.

“He took some putting down,” he muttered. “My friend, I’m glad we’ve had this talk about the in-flight amenities.” The big man glared wordlessly at him. “We also have an on-board code of behavior which comes down to guys like you being nice, or Igor and I come around to discuss the issue in our own colorful way. You gentlemen!” Rods pointed to the chorus line, who were doing their best to vanish into the concrete. “Drag your friend here out of the way of the other passengers and wait by the bags. You’re all going through last. Now, move!”

They nodded and hauled their leader away. Rods turned to see Suzanne frowning at him.

“Whaaat?” he said, spreading his arms. “I didn’t hit him in front of the other passengers.” He went back to the security enclosure shutting the door, damaged by Maceman’s abrupt exit, with difficulty.

“Does the captain know about that man,” asked one woman in the queue.

“Madam, that was the captain,” said Suzanne.

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

When they emerged in the system that contained Concord Down III, Suzanne got out of her seat and leaned forward to peer through the flight deck window as if she expected to see something with the naked eye. All she saw were dots of light.

“Look at the top screen, Cruise,” said Rods. “That’s your Concord Down.” Suzanne could see a small, grey disc. “We can spend half a day scanning it and then we’ve got to get on, or we’ll be late at our next stop.”

Suzanne had talked Rods into going to Concord Down as it seemed the best fit for the material. The Blake poem had been about the 13 colonies that eventually started the United States; their War of Independence had kicked off at Concord and in that long ago film the replicant had said down rather than up.

The planet had been checked briefly by one of the doubtful operators in the area, mainly concerned with salvage rights, and Suzanne hoped that something had been missed. It was a long shot but not out of the question as it was Mars-like, in the terminology of planet hunters, Rods had told her.

“Mars-like?” she had asked.

“Sure. A rocky planet that formed like earth and plate tectonics, where segments of the outer crust move around, got started. Volcanoes erupting gave the place some sort of atmosphere, but then the system slowed then stopped. On Earth, it kept going but on Mars it seized up, leaving one gigantic rift valley and some really big volcanoes. Similar stuff on all the planets on the list. They could have been like earth, but they just didn’t get going.”

Suzanne had heard all this from a poorly remembered science documentary.

“What made Earth so different?”

Rods had shrugged his broad shoulders. “I think they’re still arguing, but one point about the Earth is that the Earth-moon system is something like a double planet. The moon is much smaller than Earth but its size in proportion to earth still makes it stand out compared to other moons. It’s a freak occurrence. Just why the existence of the moon meant the tectonic plate and carbon cycle kept going on earth is a long story, but the bottom line is that there are a lot of Mars-like planets out there and Concord Down is one of them.”

Suzanne now stared at the small disc of Concord Down on the screen as if she could see some sign of Eve.

“Will we be going closer?”

“Not much. It has a 12-hour day so we won’t even be able to scan the whole surface, but we will see the big rift valley where life is more likely to be as the thin atmosphere is a lot denser at the bottom of the valley. If there is any life the scans should show something.”

They did not speak for some time while Suzanne watched the scan data which Max put on the screen. It meant nothing to her, but Max promised an analysis. Rods went off to do something with the engines then came back just as the analysis came back negative for any form of life.

“I felt sure that was it,” said Suzanne.

“Um, well, never mind,” said Rods. Suzanne was aware that was all her boss could think of to say on the matter. “On to King’s Foil II and another load of passengers

Later that day, Suzanne looked at the list again. What had her sister meant?

As well as dealing with passengers at King’s Foil, Suzanne was handed a new role. Rods gave her a list of traders and goods to be delivered and picked up and what each owed or was owed. The amounts involved were comparatively small, but they added up to a profitable sideline to the ores hauled in the Max’s main holds and passengers on the top deck, provided someone kept all the trades straight, ensured there was room on The Max’s mixed goods cargo section, and collected money owed – the most delicate job of all. Suzanne had suspected she had a knack for wheeling and dealing before but had never made much of it. Now she plunged into it with a zest. Occasionally she resurfaced to recollect, with some guilt, that she still had a fiancé and a mother way back on Earth Station. At some point she knew she would have to go back to swap identity cards with the girl she had saved from a mining colony. She couldn’t let the other girl keep her card. Sooner or later there would be an audit. She could go back, swap the cards with her DNA codes, and come out with her mother and Richard. There was still the problem of where they would stay apart from on The Max. Her mother might fit in, but she could not imagine Rods and Richard on the same ship without friction. Even Suzanne clashed with Rods but held her own without being unpleasant.

 

“Oh Rods,” she would say when she came in for breakfast.

“What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me in that snappish way, please!”

“I’ll ‘what’ whom I want to ‘what’ aboard my own ship, Madam Cruise, now what do you wish to discuss with me?”

 

She was able to send off the occasional brief messages – anything longer was too expensive to send by squeezed light link or would take weeks by trading ship – and then plunge back into her new life with a zest. Rods rewarded her by leaving her to do the job and permitting side trades by which Suzanne was able to acquire a few more clothes.

After studying the list she picked George’s Claim, which also seemed like a reference to the American War of Independence, but a quick inspection of it with Rods grumbling about the cost, had no result. Thoroughly puzzled she went back to organizing another load of passengers. A slight misjudgment in her duties brought another problem that required a delicate discussion with Rods.

 

“You want to have a barbecue for the passengers?” Rods exclaimed when Suzanne put the concept to him one morning, just as they came out of phase drive to pick up another load of passengers at Lucifer III. He scratched his head. “I dunno if you’ve noticed but we’re aboard a spaceship.”

“It wouldn’t strictly be a barbecue as we’d do it on the grill with the hood down and take the meat out to them.”

“Meat? You mean the meat in the freezer, that I – and you – are going to eat sooner or later.”

“You’ve got heaps of it and a lot of the passengers have never done anything like that. I’ve never done anything like that.”

“The poker tournament on the last trip was a great idea. But a barbecue? Unless …” Rods looked at her quizzically, “this is all about you messing up the numbers on the pre-packaged meals?”

Suzanne colored slightly. “I followed the ratios your guide sets out, and lots more wanted beef on the last trip. This way, just a few‘ll have to make do with chicken or fish before we pick up some more. It’s all from food vats anyway, just in a different form, so what does it matter?”

“What matters is that it’s my meat.”

“If we don’t do this, the passengers will start to complain – more than usual anyway – and want to see the captain of this fine ship.”

“Hmm. Oh, very well. A barbecue, but at least I should get a plate. I want to taste the meat that’s going down the gullet of these passengers.” He almost spat the last word.

“Of course,” said Suzanne, smiling sweetly. “You’re the captain.”

 

The news that the ship would have a barbecue for the evening meal half–way through the trip was announced by text, which was reviewed by three men sitting in a crowded bar waiting to board.

“A barbecue?” said the leader, a tall, dark man with a shaven head. “That night might be the time. May be easier to touch the food plates of others if they’re going to have a barbecue – less formal and you eat together.”

“What’s a barbecue?” asked the youngest. He looked like an undergraduate who had strayed from campus and was now nervous that his absence would be noted.

“You cook the meat on a grill or maybe an open fire and put it on the plate with salads and stuff. It’s meant to be in an atmosphere, but I’m guessing it’s just meant to be an informal way to have lunch.”

“Sounds like fun,” said the undergraduate, “but how can you have an open fire on a spaceship?”

“Must cook it on the ship’s galley stove and send it out.”

“So, we strike then?”

“No and keep your voice down. Not with all the passengers still awake. We’ll doctor the food when the plates get handed around – the stuff takes a few hours to take effect, right?”

“Should take about ten hours, if it’s a kid,” said the third man. He was heavy set with long, brown hair, and eyes that darted around the bar.

“We’ll know when to go when someone starts shouting on the flight deck intercom demanding help,” the leader told the undergraduate. “That’s when you’ve got to start the jacking script.”

“It’ll get past the inflight passenger system,” said the undergraduate. “It’s real powerful. But I’d be happier if we knew about any changes they’d done.”

“The ship’s old,” said the leader. “They’re all old out this way, and that’s the best script there is. It’ll blow away the on-board AI. It did last time.”

“Do we know anything about the crew?” said the undergraduate.

“We know enough. There’s just one permanent crew – calls himself Rods – and an occasional cruise director he gets out of brothels. They say this one’s a looker. Probably sweet on her. Should make it easier. He’s also got a drug conviction back in Zard controlled space and there’s talk that he gets high and sings in his engine room. With any luck he’ll be stoned and out of it when we go.”

“Druggie?” said the quiet man. “Heard of him. Hard man, they say.”

“I thought jacking was endemic out here,” said the undergraduate. “And this guy’s survived, so he can’t be high all the time.”

“Maybe so,” said the leader, “but we’re the best and we’ve done this before. Just remember, we go on board separately and no one even looks at anyone else until the yelling starts. Then be ready and it’ll all fall into place.”

“Hope so,” muttered the undergraduate.

 

Suzanne finished giving the passengers their dinners and came into the crew quarters to get her own, to find Rods sitting at the wardroom table.

“I thought you would have eaten already.” They sometimes had meals at the same time, but rarely when they had passengers.

“I have. I just wanted to tell you that the risk of a jacking attempt has gone up.”

“But why?” Ira put a steaming bowl of vegetable stew in front of her. Rods found the sight repugnant. He never understood any meal without meat.

“Because someone’s tried all three hatches out of the passenger area, apart from the main door. A few passengers try the hatches at some time each trip but not all three so soon after boarding, and when I can’t see who’s doing it on the security cams. Maybe it’s nothing. We have a few kids and a few guys in transit to the mining colonies so maybe it’s them, but worth remembering.”

Suzanne nodded. She had heard Rods talk about possible jackers among the passengers often enough. “I thought the main film tonight should be that remake of Emma.”

“A romance at Earth Station? The place has forced abortions, Cruise. Why not an action film?”

“A Jane Austin classic is worth watching no matter where it is set. She wrote in early nineteenth century England, but her plots are still classic.”

“I know who Jane Austin is and what she did, Cruise. I do occasionally venture from the engine room. Elizabeth Bennet was a gold digger, Emma an interfering snob and Marianne Dashwood a hysteric.”

Suzanne crossed her arms and glared at him.

“What got me was that they’re all completely idle. Put them to work in engine rooms and, I say… or as cruise directors.” He added as Suzanne continued to glare.

She smiled. “And have to deal with hateful, evil captains I suppose.”

“At least it would get their minds off their love lives. But it’s really hateful, evil jackers that are the problem. Just remember, if you have to go out there, you want to be extra careful.”

“I’m a careful girl, Rods. You know that.”

 

The next day was the barbecue which turned out to be a success but a busy time for the cruise director, who forgot all about Rods’ warning. Suzanne got to know some of the passengers, as she always did on each cruise, and there were party games. Rods watched some of the action on a screen in the bridge and decided two things – that if there was a jacking crew on board they were taking care to blend in, and that he could never understand the appeal of charades.

That night, the alarm on the passenger intercom in the passenger common area, just outside the door to the crew quarters, jerked Suzanne awake. Someone was thumping the alarm button hard.

“Suzanne! Suzanne! We have to get into the sick bay. Quickly!” The last word was a shriek.

Suzanne glanced at the intercom screen brought up automatically by Max. It was Holly the mother of four year old Oscar, the youngest of just two children on the trip and a favorite of Suzanne. She could see on the screen Oscar was writhing in his mother’s arms, screaming.

“Goodness! Holly, I’m coming. Hold on!” Suzanne hopped out of bed and grabbed slacks from the wardrobe. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know he just went into convulsions. We have to get him to that scanner. Hurry! Please hurry!”

Suzanne dashed into the passageway, bare footed still pulling on her pants and touched the lock on the door to the passenger area, which was all that was normally required to open it. This time it did not open.

“Night vision goggles,” prompted Max. “In the box on your right.”

“But he’s only four. He and Holly aren’t going to jack the ship.”

“You still have to take your goggles.”

“Hurry!” screamed Holly. Suzanne could hear her through the bulkhead. “What’s taking so long!”

Suzanne grabbed the goggles from the box and crammed them into her pocket.

“Fine! There.”

The door opened. Suzanne was aware, as she stepped out, of other passengers awoken by the noise standing around wondering if they should help, but her attention was taken up by Holly, holding a writhing Oscar. Then an arm wrapped around her throat. Rods had done something like that in training but his pretend grip had been soft. This arm choked her. She glimpsed her attacker’s shaven head and felt the attacker’s breath on her ear. It occurred to her he had eaten the fish.

“Shut your trap,” said a voice somewhere near her left ear, “and you’ll live.”

“Oscar, sick,” she managed to gurgle.

“I said shuddup.”

Holly was screaming about Oscar.

“Shut her up.”

That last remark, Suzanne realized, was addressed to someone else. She was aware of a long haired man swinging something and Holly abruptly falling silent.

“Get it open.”

To Suzanne’s horror, the crew door opened. She heard someone yelling at the other passengers and then she was dragged into the crew passageway.

 

Rods was on the bridge. He had also been woken by the alarm but ignored the unfolding drama of Holly and Oscar to get to his command post.

“Sniper screen,” he told Max.

A display of the drama but from above and behind the action around the intercom came to life. He tapped a button underneath the screen and a joystick popped up into his hand – a control he had never showed Suzanne. He saw her step out into the common area to be abruptly seized by one passenger. Another man hit Holly and yelled at the passengers to stay away.

“Got you,” he muttered. Both men had been on his list of suspects, but it had been a long list.

“No helmets,” he said to Max. “Target the one holding Suzanne.” Crosshairs appeared on the bald head. Rods hand moved to the firing button.

Then everything went dead.

Shutting down all the comms ports to the passenger deck had never been possible. Max controlled too much. But Rods had done everything short of physically disconnecting them to ensure a hacker couldn’t get through. Even then, he and Max should have received some warning. Instead, nothing. Suddenly he wasn’t in control. This jacking crew had a powerful hacking code. Rods thought he still had the bridge, but then the screens started to flicker into life. It may not be Max coming back. Rods opened the flight deck door a fraction and peeked out. The crew quarters’ lights had come on when the alarm sounded. He could see two men, one with an arm around Suzanne and something sharp at her throat, coming down the passageway. They had already opened the hatch to the passenger quarters. Worse, Igor standing at his jacking post just beside the passenger deck hatch, was now beginning to stir. If the jackers ever gained control of Igor, the game was over.

Only one thing left to do. Rods slammed the door shut and shot the very old-fashioned, simple bolt he had installed for just such an emergency, then lifted off an avionics inspection hatch, flinging it to one side with a crash. He crawled in. The panel he wanted was half a body length inside, protected by a casing with a simple metal lock. The key was out of sight, underneath another panel where Rods had put it months ago, hoping he would never have to use it. Now he did. He unlocked the casing. A dim light came on, illuminating a boarding pistol and night goggles in one compartment and on a panel a set of controls that would have been familiar to Edison – the oldest remedy for a computer malfunction, switches and buttons. Rods used them. He thumbed one button that said I-kill, for Igor kill, and turned the power off.

Not everything went off. The engine controls switched to an independent system as they were designed to do. Nuclear reactors should not be left without controls. But everything else went off – the life support systems, the passenger entertainment systems, the coffee machine and, of course, the lights.

 

Out in the corridor all Suzanne knew of Rods’ struggles was that suddenly she was in total darkness with her captor cursing fluently while jabbing hard with what felt like a wooden spike.

“Power’s gone,” said the third man. Suzanne thought he sounded young.

“I can see that,” snarled Suzanne’s captor.

“No emergency lights,” said the young man. “Old tub.”

In fact, Rods had ensured that if he ever had to pull the ultimate kill switch, the emergency lights would also be disabled.

“Turn on the panel light on your device,” snapped Baldie.

“Oh, right.”

A light in the hand of the third man turned utter blackness into one where people were shadows and the passageway a black tunnel. Beyond the hatch to the passenger quarters, which the jackers had closed behind them, Suzanne could hear the other passengers calling out to one another.

“Now then,” said Baldie, “tell your boyfriend to open the door to the bridge.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” gasped Suzanne. “I have a fiancé back on Earth Station. He won’t open the door for me.”

“We’ll soon see about that. Hey man! I got your girl here. You want me to do a number on her throat? Open up!”

Suzanne finally remembered her training. “You’re going to die.”

“Shuddup bitch! I’m getting real impatient here man! I got her carotid right here under my spike! You better open up.”

“He won’t open the door for me,” said Suzanne. “He told me to say that to any jacker.”

“Sure!” sneered the jacker.

“He told me to say you’re dead if you don’t throw away the spike thing.”

“Shuddup! You in there, open up! I’m gunna do this.” Suzanne was aware, in the dim light, of another figure standing by the door - the long haired man keeping quiet.

“You better pray this Rods guy opens the door, or you’re dead.”

“You kill me and you’re dead!” Suzanne was certain of that, at least.

Then the bridge hatch opened.

 

While the bald attacker had been yelling, Rods had been debating what to do. He had night goggles on and the boarding pistol in his hand. The gun firing rubber bullets was safely locked in the armory, a closet on the passenger side of Suzanne’s cabin. The boarding pistol was a less satisfactory back-up. Its shots were deliberately low powered so that there was less chance of stray shots tearing the hull open. But stray shots were still undesirable – Rods was hazy about what happened if the hull was punctured while the phrase drive was on and didn’t want to find out first hand. Then there was the question of keeping the cruise director alive. At two meters he wasn’t going to miss by much, but he didn’t want to miss at all.

He opened the door and moved to the left.

Baldie waited, straining his eyes to pierce the gloom.

“Push that light out there.”

The young man came up beside him and held the hacking device at arm’s length. The jacker thought he could see a dark shape looming on one side of the door. He wasn’t going to rush in.

“You come out man, or I do her,” he snarled. Suzanne felt the pressure on her neck increase, her artery throbbing under the spike.

Rods moved. He saw two men, one holding Suzanne and another holding a device He darted forward and fired. Suzanne felt Rods loom, closed her eyes and was almost deafened by the bang, then felt the pressure on her artery relax. Her assailant fell. But the third, quiet man stepped from beside the door to swing his weapon of choice, a club – a thick rod of heavy plastic picked up from a workshop. Rods registered the movement out of the corner of his eye and, with boxing reflexes, swayed his head out of the way, only for the club to smash down on his gun hand. He dropped the boarding pistol with the cry, then turned and charged, smashing his forehead into the man’s face. Blood spurted. It was the long-haired man’s turn to cry and stagger back. Rods followed it up with a kick to the solar plexus.

Remembering her training, Suzanne fell clear of the bald man then fumbled for her night goggles and put them on. She saw the third man, the young undergraduate, still holding the hacking device as a light, staring as Rods slammed the long-haired man into the bulkhead and head butted him again. The younger man looked around. The balance of power needed to shift quickly. He saw the pistol Rods dropped at the same time Suzanne did. The cruise director thought of her sister, thought of her comfortable room and dived on it, grabbing the weapon just before the undergraduate got to it. Her hands closed on the grip, her finger tightened on the trigger and she swung around holding the gun out, steady in front of her, backing away through the open bridge hatch.

“Stop or I shoot!”

The undergraduate hesitated. He hadn’t signed on to do the grunt work, and the pistol was pointing at his chest.

Rods looked around, startled. The long-haired man kneed him the testicles, then shoved him away. Rods stumbled and then fell.

“Chris, rush her,” called the long-haired man. “Get the gun.”

“Try it,” said Suzanne.

The undergraduate, who could barely see the cruise director in the gloom, stayed put.

Rods had fallen near the spike baldie had dropped, the butt of a toothbrush that had been cut in half filed to a point and then taped together again to get through inspection. Some things never change.

Rods picked it up, still bent double in agony. This was no time for respecting life and no room for playing nice. Long-haired, who had not seen Rods pick up the implement in the gloom rushed the spaceman, arms flailing, to be stabbed twice, hard, just under the rib cage. Rods thrust up, hoping to reach the heart with his borrowed implement. He didn’t but it did not matter. The jacker fell back, the implement still in his stomach. He had time to look at the instrument and at Rods.

“You guys were the best I’ve ever faced,” said Rods.

The long-haired man nodded then died.

“I surrender,” said the undergraduate, throwing up his hands and backing into the bulkhead.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

It took the crew of the James Clerk Maxwell the rest of the night and part of the next day to attend to all the post-jacking details. Suzanne got Holly, with a nasty lump on the head, and Oscar, whose convulsions had fortunately eased, to the sick bay scanner. Rods started the long process of rebooting Max and got the life support back on just as the passengers were beginning to notice that it was getting stuffy. Suzanne used the public-address system for the first time to announce that an attempt to jack the ship had been unsuccessful. The crew was still in control. The ship would dock at its next destination as planned. The route would be maintained. Breakfast would be at the usual time. For security reasons no other details would be given. The rest of the trip should be uneventful. Thank you for travelling with us.

Back at the sick bay scanner Oscar’s blood samples analysis showed a trace compound that was dissipating. Holly’s lump was treated and both mother and son were sent back to bed, with pain killers. By the time breakfast had been served, Rods had restored Igor to operation and had time for the jackers. Chris was moved from where he had been left, handcuffed and lying face down on the crew quarter’s companion way, to be installed in a makeshift brig under the ladder/stairs on the engineering level. Rods then felt free to put ice on his arm and put it into a sling.

Suzanne clucked over it, which Rods found comforting.

“The real frightening part was Igor going down as well. I’ve only had to reboot Max once before, but Igor didn’t go down then. That jacking script was powerful stuff. Check the bunks of all three jackers. They’d have some luggage. I want to look at everything, especially anything digital. Take Igor.”

“Maybe we should leave it until the passengers go?”

Rods shook his head. “Do it now, before the passengers realise who is missing and look for themselves.” Then he said, “I’m glad you grabbed that gun.”

She smiled. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to fire it.”

“I caught a glimpse of your face when you had it. You looked determined. I knew that sweet, girl next door routine of yours was just a front. You can be a tough egg when you want to be.”

“Why Rods,” she said, crossing her arms. “Sometimes you can be almost charming.”

The fight with the hackers proved to be a turning point in Suzanne’s dealings with Rods and The Max. She was given access to all parts of the ship, even the sacred engine room – not that she wanted to go there much, especially as Rods was likely to be singing along to the ship’s music - and to most of Max’s systems. She was accepted and that meant a lot to her.

 

Before either Rods or Suzanne could put the stressful jacking incident behind them, there was the small matter of the third and least dangerous of the jackers in The Max’s tiny brig. This cell had been created by simply welding plate steel on one side of the under-ladder space on the engineering level, and bars in front. One section had been made to swing out in a basic door. Plumbing was a bucket with a lid and a bottle of water. A mattress and bedding judged too tattered for paying passengers made up the cell’s furnishings. When Rods returned to this makeshift brig, right arm in a sling, the jacker was lying on the mattress, asleep. The spaceman banged on the cell bars with the cattle prod brought from the upper decks for the occasion.

“Wakey, wakey!”

Chris, looking all of a fresh faced 18, got up. There was just enough head room for him to stand right up close to the bars. He had been made to strip down to his shorts.

“I want a lawyer.”

Rods touched the prod on Chris’s hand. The jacker yelled and jerked back, only to bang his head on the cell ceiling.

“What did you say?”

“I said I wanted a lawyer,” said Chris, holding his head.

“That’s what I thought you said. There are no lawyers out here, Chris, just degrees of pain. My little cattle prod toy here, incidentally, is on its lowest setting and it has an impressive energy source.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

“On the contrary, I can do whatever I damn well please. This is the rim, and you’ve just tried jacking my ship.” Rods unfolded a seat attached to the bulkhead for just such sessions and sat down in front of the cell, holding the probe so that the bare end rested on the bars within poking distance of the jacker who eyed it nervously. “Your identity card says Christopher and the long-haired man called you Chris, so that’s the name we’ll use?”

Chris nodded.

“It’s not a good idea to know the name of people you may be pushing out an airlock real soon, but it’s done now.”

“You – you wouldn’t push me out of an airlock?”

Rods banged the bars again.

“Chris, focus. We’re not in controlled space here. This ship is not registered, insured or in any way regulated. Out here each port has its own peace officers, such as they are, but they haven’t any jurisdiction over spaceships on a trip and a lot of people depend on The Max maintaining its routes. They’re not going to inquire about missing jackers. In the unlikely event of them doing so, they’d accept any story I told them. Digital records will confirm my story when I decide what that story will be. So, a lot depends on your answers. If your answers are truthful, I could drop you off at one of the less reputable mining colonies where you will live – you won’t like your life, but you will live – or, if you are un-cooperative, I could stop over at one of the lesser star systems and open the airlock with you in it. Are we clear here?”

“Clear,” said Chris nervously.

“Good.”

Igor walked up. “I have finished.” This meant he had finished putting the bodies of the two remaining jackers near the port airlock door.

“He’s an old colony model isn’t he?” said Chris. Zap! “Ow! Stop doing that!”

The would-be jacker sat down and tried to curl up, away from Rods’ prod but his cell was too small.

“Chris, the information flow here is one way – I ask questions, you answer. Anything else aside from an answer to a question – such as questions of your own, observations, conversational gambits, asides, curses or remarks of any kind – will be dealt with. Are we also clear on that point?”

“Cl - clear.”

“Good. Now, how did you get into your happy band of jackers?”

“They sent me messages through a friend. I was on Bryson Three, stuck in a cubicle maintaining software for big mining systems with everything going to the Zards.”

“Your ticket out?”

“No one I knew had anything. We were running as hard as we could to stand still, and if you lost your job or had any sort of trouble you were shipped out. Never heard from again. They wanted me to run the jacking script for them.”

“They didn’t have anyone before you? This wasn’t their first time.”

“They’d done it a couple of times before – maybe – just once with a major ship, but I also knew the guy they’d worked with before and he died on the last one.”

“He died, so you took his place? You were living dangerously?”

“Yeah, well, like I said, any slip meant being shipped out and they told me about this El Dorado deal – a place where you could go outside…”

Rods suddenly became considerably more interested in the conversation, but he was careful not to show it. Instead, he yawned.

“… you just had to wear hats, no fancy suits, and just once I’d like to feel the wind on my face. They said one more time and they’d have a good place to live and live like lords in some community with machines to do the work. And I wouldn’t have had to do anything else – didn’t have anything else.” Chris’ voice trailed away.

“Walking around on a surface around here?” said Rods. “The El Dorado thing is a local myth and you fell for it.”

“No, no – at least, that’s what they told me, and they said they’d been there. El Dorado. Paradise. You could walk on the surface and the Zards weren’t there. Some sort of terra-formed valley.”

“I see. None of this is helping me very much Chris – El Dorado is still a legend – and you want to help me, you really do. You want to give me some details. Did these guys happen to mention the name of the ship they jacked – the one where your friend died?”

“If they weren’t dead you could have asked them.”

Zap!

“Ow! Hey, I was answering your question!”

“You were making a suggestion. Admittedly suggestions were not on my list of don’ts but now you know they are. Do I have to repeat the question?”

“They told me the name, but I don’t remember it; something Trader, I think.”

“The Dawn Treader?”

“Sounds right. Remember thinking it was a funny name.”

“These guys jacked the Dawn Treader then they need my ship? Why didn’t they sell the Treader and go? Sell it and set up far away from here.”

“They didn’t sell it. It’s still sitting there; something wrong with the engines.”

“You can’t leave a ship around here without crew, and I haven’t heard of it on the market, busted engines or not. Start making sense.”

“There’s some other dude they’ve left with it.”

“A fourth jacker? Chris this is getting alarming. I thought once I spaced you or dumped you at a mining colony that would be the end of your happy little band, but it seems not.”

“The other guy’s not a jacker, he’s a colonist. He was one of the ones still on the ship when they jacked it.”

Rods banged the cell bars.

“Chris I’m a man of limited attention span and low boredom threshold. How come the jackers were fighting the colonists and how come they won? There were more than fifty colonists on that ship, and the crew knew what they were doing.”

“I dunno exactly, but the other guys told me a bit about it. They were part of the expedition. Most of the others had gotten off the ship; were setting up camp. Then my guys started the jacking script. Those still on board who weren’t jackers put up a fight.”

“That’s when your friend got killed?”

“Guess.”

“The survivor was left in this ship and, what, he can’t use the comms to call for help?”

“Don’t think he has control over the ship, so he just sits there. Like a prison except that someone’s on the ship, so no salvage.”

“A technicality out here Chris, there must be something more. But you don’t know where this ship prison is?”

A calculating look flitted across Chris’s face. “No, but I could get you on it easily, with my device.”

“You mean this?”

Rods put down his probe and used his one good arm to take the jacking device that had just caused him so much trouble out of one of Igor’s body compartments. Previous generations would have mistaken it for a large calculator with an unusual keypad.

“Sure, it’s the same system – the key to it, in fact. You get me to the ship, I do the interface, a couple of commands and we switch to voice control.”

“Hmmm!” Rods looked at the device. He could always take a chance that the Max could work it out.

“Your AI’d be pretty old,” said Chris, as if he knew what Rods was thinking. “And this is state of the art – even if the box doesn’t look it.”

“I wouldn’t call Max old while aboard ship. AIs that have been around a while develop a personality, and she may decide that there is a problem with life support on engineering deck.”

“The life support systems on engineering deck have always been a problem,” said Max. She had been listening to the conversation all along, just as she did many other tasks simultaneously. “We have discussed the difficulties before.”

“I remember. Shame if they should suddenly fail, leaving me with just a few seconds to get to a hatch. No time to unlock cell doors.”

“Safety procedures would forbid it.”

“All right, all right,” said Chris. “This ship is a fi...” He stopped short as Rods put down the device and slid his prod through the bars, to almost touch Chris’s bare flesh. Rods put the prod down and picked up the device again without a word. “Okay, what is it worth?” said Chris after a long silence.

“You’re asking questions again, Chris,” said Rods, picking up the prod. “But I’ll indulge this one question. What is what worth?”

“Being able to get you into the Dawn Trader.”

“It’s Treader, as in heavy tread, and your co-operation is worth a more comfortable post-jacking experience. Maybe if you impress me with your zeal, I’ll call in a favor and drop you off at one of the better mining colonies – one where the supervisors are neglectful, rather than actively sadistic.”

“That’s not enough. I want guarantees of a decent crib.”

“Or I could drop you off at that colony with the mad doctor who does experiments by exposing people to hard vacuums – how long it takes them to die, the damage to human tissue caused and so on. Last I heard he was exposing individual limbs with the people still attached to see what would happen.” (Rods had heard of such a doctor but thought his base was back in Zard-controlled space.) “If you can get me into the Treader, assuming we can find it, I will have some interest in your welfare. Not much interest, but I will keep you alive. Afterwards I may not give you to the vacuum doctor.”

“That’s not enough…”

Rods reached for his prod again, and Chris fell silent.

“Rods, near planet fall,” said Max.

“Where I get off,” said Chris.

Rods hung the prod on a specially fitted bracket on the wall. “We have a monitor on you. I’ll be back to finish our chat in a few hours. If you have to go the bathroom remember to use the bucket and close the lid.”

“You can’t leave me like this,” Chris called after him.

Rods did not bother to reply.

 

When Suzanne had waved off the passengers and finished chatting with a handful she had come to know, only to drop them into a very uncertain future, she came back on board to find Rods waiting for her at the wardroom table.

“Are you going to let me look at that arm?”

Rods could have done with a little more comforting, but instead he said, “sit down”.

Suzanne sat down, thinking that Rods abrupt tone meant she was in trouble.

“There is at least a chance your sister is alive.”

“You know this how?” she said sharply, now very intent on the conversation.

“The surviving jacker downstairs has an interesting story.” Rods then told her what Chris had said.

“The Dawn Treader got to wherever it was going, and the colonists got off onto the surface. Could they have survived this long?”

Rods shrugged. “Maybe. They were setting up camp, he says, so they must have off loaded some equipment, some food, and he said they could walk on the surface. All this is second hand but it adds up to a chance they’ve survived. But now we have to find it. I didn’t believe in an El Dorado out here because I was thinking of a whole planet. A terra-formed rift valley deep enough, and it’d have to be real deep to keep its atmosphere, might work. It’s still like finding that dragons exist, but it might work.”

“What’s the first step?” said Suzanne. This was a new, excited Rods she had not seen before.

“We find the Dawn Treader. It must be at the Oid planet.”

“The planet you said we shouldn’t go to.”

“We can visit. It’s just not a good idea to go out onto the port or the settlement without serious backup, and you don’t go out at all. The Oids are always asking to buy earth women.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh’. No one knows what for, and no one has been desperate or callous enough to do it – yet.”

“But there are so many people coming through, and everyone is broke.”

“True. We don’t know of it happening yet, but let’s not have you out in the dome when you go there.”

“Okay… we’re going there?”

“Only place where the ship could be docked and left alone around here, so these guys must have done a deal with one of the clans. The planet is basically a lawless refuge of the Oids race, but it’s still got a lot of different clans who don’t want to mess with one another. If the Treader is still around here it’s docked out the port there out of the way, under the protection of one of the clans.”

“We go there and get it?”

“First, we go through all the stuff our two late and unlamented jackers left behind for clues as to what deal they had done and with which clan, and then I think we’ll need Chris to co-operate on our terms. Maybe you can help with that.”

 

Chris had finally drifted off to sleep to dream of women pleased to see him in a place far away from his cell on the James Clerk Maxwell when Rods banged on the bars of the cell. He sat up to see both the captain and the cruise director of the Max seated opposite, with Igor standing to one side in what was now a crowded area of the Maxwell. Rods and his electric prod were only too familiar to Chris, but the cruise director he remembered as being all smiles and charm for him as a paying passenger. As his fellow jackers in the bar had noted, she was also “a looker”. He tried a smile. Suzanne glared back.

“So, it’s this one,” she said, in her best stern voice, leaning back in a chair that had been brought in from engineering. “Tell me again why he’s still alive.”

Chris’s smile died away.

“It’s this colony ship business, Cruise.”

“Oh yes, still around, he’s saying.”

“You’ve got a financial interest in the medico on the colony ship.”

“Bitch owes me thirty Cs.”

“You said twenty.” They had previously agreed on 20.

“Interest,” she said, without taking her eyes off Chris.

“Thirty it is. So, Chris, you will be pleased to learn we can spare a few moments to discuss your future. Ships with busted engines are not of much use to us, but some idea of where the colonists are would bring you a longer, less miserable life.”

“But I don’t know anything about where they are,” whimpered Chris.

“You must know something, Chris. Everyone knows something, even if they don’t know that they know it. A chance remark; a comment.”

“If I tell you all I know, you’ll kill me.”

Rods banged the cell bars and brought the tip of the prod to the point of almost touching Chris’s shrinking body. “That wasn’t an answer to a question, Chris!”
Suzanne sighed. “Look, we’ve got enough from the digital stuff we took from the other two. We’re only after confirmation and this bunny is useless. Why don’t we get Igor to just snap this guy’s neck and stick him in the air lock.”

“Why kill him first?” Rods leaned back, leaving the prod to rest on the cross bars, within easy poking distance of the captive’s flesh. “It’s more fun if we space him alive.”

Suzanne rolled her eyes. “More fun for you. I have to clean up, and it’s so messy if they hang on and blow up while still in the lock.”

“Ira cleans up; why not let me have some fun.”

“Sure Ira cleans up, but I supervise. There’s always stuff left over – some icky bit that I have to point out. It’s horrible. Snapped neck and a nice, clean disposal or find yourself another cruise director, mister.”

“Then what about wrap in clear plastic with duct tape, so I can see his expression when he’s sucked out?”

Suzanne shook her head. “Had to throw out the last lot of clear plastic; too much blood on it, and we’ve used all the duct tape.”

“We have?” Rods let his eyes wander from Chris, who had an expression of sick horror on his face, to his cruise director, wondering if they really had used all the duct tape, as he did occasionally need some.

She folded her arms and glared at him. “You and your games. Makes me sick.”

Rods shrugged. “Oh alright, snap his neck then, see if I care.”

“Igor!” said Suzanne. Igor moved forward.

“Wait,” shrieked Chris who had been watching the exchange with growing horror.

“I like to see necks snapped Chris,” said Suzanne, putting on an evil grin. “Slow motion is better. Fun to watch.”

“I can still be useful,” Chris whimpered, on his knees, hands on the bars.

“If you’re not going to let me have any fun, then let the man speak.”

“Oh, very well! It’s always about you men and your obsessions. Igor: hold.” The robot’s extendable arms had almost reached the jacker’s throat. “And in what way could you be useful?”

“If we go to the Oid planet I can take you to the Dawn Treader.”

“You do know where it is?” said Rods.

“I’ve never been there, and never seen the ship but the others gave me the dock number and contact details for the clan. It’s in my PA somewhere in notes; subject heading ‘ship’.”

“We’ll check it out. If there are problems we’ll be back, and we won’t be as nice as we’ve been this time.”

“Should snap his neck anyway,” said Suzanne.

“I can open up the ship for you,” whimpered Chris, “I think I know how to do it from the device.”

“Think?” said Rods. “You want to do more than just think, Chris. Cruise let’s not dispose of him just yet. He may be of use.”

Suzanne glared at Rods then at Chris. “Oh, alright,” she said standing up. “My fun can wait. But if you’re going to torture him, keep the hatches closed. The screaming is irritating.”

“You were always so nice,” whispered Chris, aware that Rods was hanging up the prod.

“I’m nice to all the passengers,” said Suzanne, “I get better tips.”

Suzanne and Rods waited until they got back to the crew quarters, closing the hatches behind them, before bursting out laughing – Rods’ barking easily drowning out Suzanne’s giggles.
“Arf! Arf! Arf! You… you and your games make me sick! Arf! Arf! Arf! Too… too much blood on the plastic. Arf! Arf! Arf!”

They fell with their backs against the forward crew quarter hatch and slid down until they were seated. Their faces turned in and were almost touching and Suzanne knew she should turn away, but she didn’t. Instead, Rods did. He stood up and shook himself, smiling now rather than laughing.

“Interrogations with you are fun!” he said and walked off.

Suzanne thought it was the best compliment he had ever given her before recollecting, with a start, that she had a fiancé.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Chris was given back his clothes, and entertainment tablet – which Max would carefully watch for any hacking attempts – and permitted to use the engineering level bathroom, with Igor in close attendance. Rods rejected Suzanne’s suggestion that Chris be put in the spare cabin. They had reputations as monsters to uphold. Monsters did not give spare cabins to prisoners.

“We should make him sleep in the air lock, just to prove a point,” he told her, “but it’s not all secure and he might damage something.”

With jacker Chris languishing in his cell and the usual layover at Finn’s Reef put to one side – the tiny colony there would forgive them once all was explained – they made straight for the Oid planet at top speed, Rods keeping a careful eye on the engineering displays and on his likely future schedule. When not conveying passengers, The Max kept an irregular round and so was not expected at any particular port at any particular time, but lengthy absences would be noticed, and he did not want to draw attention to what they had found. Suzanne had been sternly warned that if she did tell a soul about El Dorado she would be sharing Chris’s cell.

“Well, that makes a change from being threatened with a spacing,” she said, “is there something wrong with the airlock?”

“You’re now known to a lot of people and spacing you might upset them. If I put you in a cell they would understand.”

“Doesn’t make sense to me, but Chris’s cell is too small for two.”

“I’ll build another in the same space on B deck but, seriously Cruise, you can’t tell anyone. It would cause pandemonium. No one would talk about anything else, and the Zards would inevitably get wind of it. They might send a squadron which we wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance of resisting, and they could even know where to look. Then your sister becomes a Zard slave and you may never see her again.”

“Oh alright, I wasn’t going to tell anyone.” Later she deleted the long notes she had been writing to her mother and Richard, replacing them with the cryptic comment that they were making progress.

 

Chris was dreaming of available women again, on his third day in his tiny cell when he was woken by his cell door being unlocked. Igor slapped handcuffs on him, grabbed one of his upper arms and started to lead him. Chris now knew not to struggle against Igor’s grip, but he never knew when to shut up.

“I need a shower”.

No answer.

“Have we reached another planet?”

No answer.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To Rods.”

Chris was led through the main airlock down a transparent tube into another airlock and out into a wide passageway made of what to human eyes seemed to be grey stone with a life support duct running along one corner and bare electric lights every few meters. The tall, grim Rods took out a remote, pressed a button and the cuffs unlocked.

“Does this mean I can go?”

“Sure, if you want to go and talk to those guys?” said Rods as he took the handcuffs, pointing down the passage, to a group of creatures behind a waist high barrier. “They’d welcome you. There’s some obscure ritual thing they like to do with human bodies. They’d prefer a woman, but a guy is still worth something.”

The creatures were tall and gangly with grey fur and a face inset with big, square, pearly white teeth never covered by any lips, so to a human it looked as if they were always grinning inanely. They all wore black hats, like a nineteenth century stove pipe hat but somewhat shorter and slightly bent - all part of some deep, dark aspect of Oid culture. Chris had a vague recollection of the story The Cat in the Hat from his childhood. The Oids were grey versions of the cat.

“The colony ship is this way,” said Rods, pointing down the passage, in the opposite direction to the Oids. You can choose what direction you want to go in.”

“Your way sounds good.”

Watching through a monitor from the ship, Suzanne thought the Oids looked evil. She did not like the way they stared at the small group from the Max, and then at the Max itself when the group moved off, as if expecting a woman to emerge that they could kidnap. She had been in half a mind to disobey Rods and follow them to the Dawn Treader for first hand news of her sister, but after seeing the Oids she decided to stay well away from the airlock.

 

The Treader was a long walking distance down the passage, and Chris still could not shut up.

“Did you do a deal with the clan guys?”

Rods looked at him.

“Hey, just asking. It might be useful information when it comes to getting in.”

Rods decided that, for the moment, more could be gained by being civil.

“Two mountains is the name of the clan. I won’t even try to pronounce it in Oid language, but that’s the English equivalent according to the translator. If they’d been able to get into the ship without damaging it and knew enough about the engines to get it moving the Treader would be long gone. I told the clan head’s representative that I can get in and may be able to fix the engines so they said go for it.”

“Aren’t they worried you’ll take off with it?”

“It’s locked in. We’ll have to do a deal. If any cargo is left aboard we can always give him that in exchange for taking it away – or give them the ship in exchange for the cargo.”

“The colonists won’t be happy.”

“Chris, you’re a jacker, remember, and your gang stole it in the first place, so why should you care what the colonists think? Here we are. Do your thing.”

Chris saw an airlock door, just like the one they had left and through an oval shaped porthole he could see the Dawn Treader - a two-deck ship as opposed to The Max’s three but a touch longer than The Max. He flicked on the jacking device which soon synced with the airlock security.

“Shall we go in?” said Chris.

Rods took the device from him. “What do I do to get voice command?”

“Difficult to tell by the screen. What’s it worth?”

“Igor, pressure,” said Rods without looking up.

Igor’s hands shot out and, before Chris could move, grabbed both his upper arms. The robot then started to pull Chris apart.

“Ahh! You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“If you think I’m hurting you now, wait until I tell Igor to really start pulling. He doesn’t have any of the behavioral blocks about hurting humans they used to build into robots, and he’s very powerful.”

“Go in front or behind,” said Igor.

“The instructions on the screen are unclear Chris. Shall we go over this now, or do you want to wait until you are in greater pain?”

“I need to see the screen.” Rods held it up for him to look at. “Tap on the third line, reads Vin3000. Then say something.”

Rods did as instructed, and the screen disappeared to be replace with a single “good to go”.

“Voice command,” he said to the gate.

“Voice recognized. Identification?”

“Rods, with two others. Igor and Chris. Voice commands only from me.”

“You call me Dawn. Enter.”

The gate clicked. Rods found he could pull it open.

“Igor stop!”

“Ow!” said Chris, indignantly rubbing his arms. Rods grabbed him and pushed him into the gate. “Hey!”

“You first and yell for the colonist who should be on here somewhere. Igor, you’re the rear.”

“I like in front,” grumbled the robot.

“If it’s dangerous I make you go in front. That’s fair.”

Chris helloed for all he was worth as they walked the passageways. Rods pulled out his boarding pistol. The Dawn, an old ship like The Max, had a similar layout except that with only two decks, there was no lift. They found the connecting ladder and moved up to the crew accommodation.

“You should yell before you open the main hatch,” said Rods.

“Huh!” said Chris, turning to look at Rods, with the hatch already half open.

“Yell something.”

“Oh right.” Chris turned back to the hatch and opened it to be confronted by a person of about his own age with a wispy beard who plunged a kitchen knife into Chris’ chest.

“I got one,” he yelled.

Chris screamed and slumped to the deck.

Rods clamped one hand on the hatch and brought up the pistol.

“Stand away and leave the hatch where it is.”

“I got one of you,” hissed the man, raising his hands.

“Very good, but we’re the rescue party. I’ve got a relative of one of the colonists on my ship.”

The colonist’s mouth fell open and he looked down at Chris, now lying motionless in a pool of spreading blood.

“Oh!” he said.

 

“Whadda you mean you don’t know the name of the planet you went to?”

They had moved Chris’s body into the cramped wardroom of the Dawn, removed the knife and wrapped the body in a ground sheet found in the hold. The colonist, known as Logan, had spoken with Suzanne via the ship’s port link and had accepted that Rods was telling the truth.

“I’m telling you I don’t know. None of us knew. We weren’t told the co-ordinates and we weren’t told the local name. We weren’t told the last two ports we went to and I don’t even know when we stopped. I don’t think it’s in the ship’s log or backup.”

“It isn’t. The jacker script messed things up but if the location was ever entered it was later removed. Not even the navigation log shows where the ship came from. What a mess. Coming back to here after the fight at El Dorado, how many nights?”

“Two, I think, but I just can’t be sure. I was out for most of it and then they drugged me.”

Rods sighed. “Let’s move on. You still seem to have a lot of the equipment on board?”

“One pod was unloaded. Some food, some survival stuff, and there was already a building.”

“A building? I thought the place was deserted.”

“Oh, it’s not deserted. There are animals and apparently intelligent life forms.”

“Intelligent? Human, what?”

Logan shrugged. “I was just going to unload one of the cargo pods and then check it all out myself. Then everything happened real fast. I’ve been here ever since. Only other bit I heard was that the building was deserted. They were talking on the comms about how they could just move into it. Whoever terra-formed the valley must have left it.”

“These intelligent other things weren’t living in it?”

“Seems not. There was talk of a big mound North of the building, towards the rift valley wall.”

“And you have no idea where this planet might be?”

“No, sorry.”

“Then we’re back to the poem.”

“Poem?”

Rods explained about the cryptic message. “You don’t know anything about Blake do you?”

Logan shook his head.

“Never heard of him before. I’m on the logistics side. Would really have liked to get out on the surface.”

“You may yet if we find it. In the mean time you’ve got to stay here.”

“Wait, what? Here? Can’t I come with you?”

“I can’t move the ship and I don’t want to leave it unoccupied for the same reason your jacker pals didn’t want to. The Oids check there’s someone on board every couple of days, right?”

“Yep, but I dunno what I could do to stop them if they decided to take the ship over.”

“That’s true but they’d have to damage it and now you have some control over The Dawn they’d find it difficult. The Oids also understand that humans tend to notice if another human goes missing, although they don’t really understand why. They’d be reluctant to do anything with you still on board. I’ll leave you in control. Look active, move cargo around. Go onto the wharf once a day and walk up and down for 10 minutes as if you’re expecting something to happen.”

“You mean actually go out?”

“Yep, but don’t move more than a few meters from the gate. If any of the locals approach then get back inside quick, and don’t open up. Tell ‘em to go away through the translator. If they refuse then call the Clan contact I’ll give you and get him to shift them. You don’t tell them anything else. If an official-looking delegation turns up, check with the clan contact that they are official and then deal with them through the gate translator. Strict instructions not to let anyone on board, that sort of thing. If they press too hard, close off comms.”

“Got it – I think, but how long is all this going to take?”

“We’ll try and check back in a couple of weeks?”

“Another two weeks of this ship.” Logan spread his arms. “I’m getting real bored with this place.”

“We’re trying to unravel a situation here – deal with a mystery involving a sizable chunk of the galaxy, Logan. You’ll have to do your part.”

Logan sighed. “I guess so, but what about your friend here?” he said gesturing at the sheet wrapped form on the floor. “What am I going to do with this body for two weeks?”

“Everyman’s death diminishes me and all that, but Chris was no friend of mine and the deed is done. You can try cutting the body up and cycling him through the ship’s disposal system which, trust me, is a messy business. Or you can wrap him up a bit tighter, wait for rigor mortis to set in and stick him upright in your freezer. It should be large enough to take the body without becoming unduly crowded. Tie him or duct tape him to one of the shelves so that he doesn’t fall over unexpectedly. That can be scary, even when you know he’s there. Again, trust me on this.”

“Can’t you take him and tip him out an airlock at a convenient point.”

“That’ll be his eventual fate,” said Rods, “but I’m not parading around the port with a dead body. As I said, the Oids don’t know much about humans but they do know the difference between a live and a dead one, and I told them I wouldn’t take anything off the ship. They’ll be watching.”

“Oh! And we can’t move the ship?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the engines as far as I can tell. The problem is the operating system. Rob and Hoss built a failsafe into it which has triggered and I can’t untrigger it until I find them.”

“I’m stuck here, then. Just me and Chris.”

“Chris is more congenial the way he is,” said Rods getting up to go, “not to mention more trustworthy. You two have fun now.”

 

“Now we know what happened,” said Suzanne when they were well on their way to the next port and she had chewed over the events with Rods, “we just don’t know where it happened.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Like Rods, Suzanne had taken Chris’s death lightly. He had no immediate family to notify. More distant relatives would, eventually, be informed of his death in a mining colony.

“We can still search planet by planet,” she said.

“That’s going to take months, even if now we know what to look for.”

“Or we can try and work out my darling sister’s puzzle.”

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

 

Another port came and went. Suzanne was aware that the flood of immigrants was now easing, as all possible places in the mining colonies were taken, which worried her – what use would Rods have for her if there were no complaining passengers? But at the least for the moment the next load of passengers was two ports away and she had some spare time to take another look at her sister’s message. She arranged the texts underneath each other.

 

Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll’d

Around their shores indignant burning with the fires of Orc

And Bostons Angel cried aloud as they flew thro’ the dark night

Tiger, tiger burning bright.

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 

Then the numbers - 281334141622131411511621

 

And the planet names.

 

Xeno’s Dive III 9257610

Fermat II 9888392

Everest Folly 9645819

Mickey’s Dive IV 9140891

Suman IV 9557141

Jupiter VIII 9322893

Honmen II 9980672

Schrodinger III 9765813

Porter’s Place II 9874336

Concord Down III 9034221

Logan II 9546721

George’s Claim 9122045

Getty IV 9390221

Hamish II 9654983

Sabrina III 9224472

 

 

 

That night in her room she studied the riddle for what seemed to her to be an age, until the figures danced and the planet names whirled around her. Her sister’s numbers had no zeros, she realized, but the planet catalog numbers had zeros. Did that mean anything? Tired out by this endless go-round of verse, planet and numbers she eventually put her head on the table for just a minute, or so she thought. She dreamt of her sister.

 

Eve was just as Suzanne remembered her when they last spoke in one of these few nooks at the crowded Earth Station where privacy was still possible if you whispered. She was a larger version of Suzanne with a preference for button-up shirts and skirts which she thought more professional, as opposed to Suzanne’s T-shirts and jeans and she spoke, as she often did, one hand to her face, her elbow resting on anything convenient – in this case a ledge. That was the conversation in which Eve had told Suzanne that she was leaving on the quest for El Dorado and that she would send for her, Richard and her mother as soon as she could.

“If I don’t come back, look at this,” she had said, passing her a folded slip of paper with the clues. “But you must never, ever put it in a computer system. The Zards knew about this place once, but it’s been forgotten somehow. The other colonists weren’t going to tell me where it was, but I wouldn’t agree to anything unless they told me where it was and they needed a medico.”

“Oh, Eve! It’s still a risk.”

“Don’t ‘Oh Eve’ me. Of course it’s a risk, but what choice do we have for a future with the Zards squeezing us? They don’t care about us. They’ll just keep squeezing until the human race goes under. This may be a way out, at least for us. Now go ahead and look.”

Suzanne unfolded the note.

“But what does this mean?” she said after glancing at it.

“I thought you might like Blake. I had to assemble it in a hurry.”

“The Tiger is the Blake poem?”

“First verse, yes.”

“Is this some literary code? And what’s the replicant reference?”

In real life, Suzanne recalled later, Eve had not answered. She had kissed her on the forehead said “love you, love mum” and had left. But in the dream Eve answered, sounding like Rods.

“I didn’t do literature Do you think I’m like those people in films who know ancient mysteries and make up riddles in Greek for others to solve? I tried to just use the first lines of Blake, but I was missing something.”

“What?”

Eve leaned forward to whisper in Suzanne’s ear. “I needed an M.”

Then she was gone.

 

Suzanne woke abruptly, looked down at the paper in front of her, her gaze falling on the numbers, then up at the poems.

“No,” she breathed, “It can’t be that simple.”

 

For his part, Rods was dreaming of engines that needed fixing and women who were getting him into trouble, when he became aware of someone pounding on his cabin hatch, shouting. He jumped up and flung it open to be confronted by an ecstatic Suzanne.

“I’ve worked it out! I’ve worked it out!” she yelled. Then did a double take. “Is that what you wear to bed?”

“Just be thankful I have shorts on, Cruise. Next time you’ll think better of disturbing the captain’s much needed beauty sleep.”

“Come to the table. Quick,” she said and dashed through the wardroom hatch.

He came in a minute later, unshaven and bleary eyed but had taken a moment to put on pants. Suzanne thought he looked good unshaven and then wrenched her mind back to the topic at hand.

“What’s all this fuss about, Cruise.” He thought he had not seen her looking so cheerful. “What have you worked out?”

“The numbers are just a code,” she said, putting the paper in front of him. “Look at the numbers.”

Rods saw 136746622211131, but with slashes after every third number – 136/746/622/211/131/412/422.

“It’s line, word number in line then letter. It spells out F E R M A T II.”

Rods checked for himself then said, “Max get me the scans on Fermat II, everything we have, and keep all this stuff tightly quarantined. No leakages. Project it on the table.”

“Coming right up,” said Max.

“Okay, a rocky planet comparable to earth in size,” said Rods, as the projection appeared. “With a single rift valley along the equator more or less. Mars-like as planet classifiers say. The rift valley is 16 kilometers deep. Now that’s a hole. Quite a scar on the surface. How old is the scan Max?”

“Twenty years.”

“Hmmm! Well, they would have to have atmosphere in the whole valley. There doesn’t look to be any vegetation, but it was 20 years ago and the scans were about minerals. Max, bring it right up and let’s scan along the valley.” They studied the image in silence for a few moments.”

“There,” said Rods, pointing. Suzanne could see an area in the middle of the valley where the image was slightly fuzzy. “Max, they would have done a thermoscan at the same time. Bring up the temperature contrasts.”

The fuzzy area turned a light blue, as did several other areas in the scan.”

Rods grabbed one of Suzanne’s hands and held it between his own, smiling at her.

She could not decide whether she was alarmed or pleased with this new, smiling Rods.

“You’re a genius, you know that.”

“I’m sure I am,” Mr. Rods, “but why am I a genius because those areas are blueish?”

“I’m pretty sure that means they’re clouds, so it had an atmosphere 20 years ago and might have developed a lot since. This is El Dorado.” Rods gestured at the map. “If your sister is anywhere in the Galaxy it is right here.”

Suzanne was initially pleased but when she later looked at the map in detail, she thought the place looked barren.

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

 

The next port of call was Karl’s Rift, which Rods thought they should go to, and dispose of their business quickly, without seeming to hurry. They could wave aside the schedule for a few days and explain the absence by saying that the engines were giving trouble. That trouble could only be fixed at Fin’s Reef.

“You’ve been asking too many people about El Dorado, Cruise,” said Rods when Suzanne questioned him about the need to explain anything, “and I didn’t stop you because I didn’t think it important. Fortunately, no one’s paid much attention, but if we disappear for any length of time then reappear, and you’ve replaced your endless questions about El Dorado with furtive looks, people will wonder.”

“I don’t do furtive looks,” said Suzanne. “You remember the interrogation? I’m a good enough liar when I need to be.”

“Better not to lie at all. Shut up about El Dorado. If asked just say you’ve given up asking. Above all, you must not even breathe that you know it’s for real and have a location. As I’ve told you before the news would cause pandemonium. No one would talk about anything else. Then the Zards will hear about it.”

“Can’t I tell a couple of people who should know?”

“Cruise, that’s the same as telling everyone. Those people will tell just a couple of people they think can be trusted, and before you know it a Zard fleet is on our doorstep. Those guys will then enslave or execute whoever they can get their hands on while denying the massacre and complaining bitterly that their rights under interstellar law are not being respected. There you are, El Dorado is gone, your sister probably is gone, and all because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”

As it happened, Rods was the one who had to lie, getting stuck with a valuable cargo of semi processed ore for ship lift crystals, despite his protestations that he would have to go back to his stock of spare parts at Fin’s Reef. That’s on the way, he was told, and that he was the only one the valuable cargo could be entrusted to. Eventually they departed and at meal times Suzanne found herself sharing the ward room table with assorted pieces of equipment and weaponry which Rods insisted on bringing up from the lockers on C deck. One such item was a container about the size and shape of a pack that hikers on Earth might have worn. Like those packs the container was also designed to be worn on the back, but had an arm arranged so that it wrapped around the body of the wearer to present a small instrument panel to that user.

“It’s a lift pack,” said Rods, noticing Suzanne looking at it.

“And why is it on the table at breakfast?”

“I could use it to drop down into the valley. It’s anti-gravity. Switch it on and you go up. Have it on when you’re falling and can fall at whatever rate you want or go back up. It’s fun to use.”

“If you like that sort of thing,” said Suzanne, “so is this how we’re going to get into the valley?”

“Nope. The pack is for when it gets up close and personal. We’ll leave The Max out of the way somewhere just above the cliffs and take the shuttle in.”

Suzanne had only become aware that The Max had a shuttle a week after coming on board, and only after seeing an area marked shuttle while working on floor plans and asking about it. She found that it was by far the newest part of the ship, being a mere ten years old, and capable of seating maybe 15 people plus the pilot and co-pilot, in comfort and even style.

“Yep,” said Rods when Suzanne mentioned this. “It was salvaged off some swanky cruise ship but with the engines all fouled up. I was able to fix it and paid for it with some cargo hauling. It’s not much use to me normally – we don’t do the sightseeing side trips it was designed for – but I’ll want it someday.”

“You could work on your bits and pieces in the shuttle,” Suzanne said hopefully. “There’s enough room and the annoying cruise director wouldn’t be trying to eat her breakfast next to them.”

“The annoying cruise director has to be shown these items – the information could come in useful if we’re cornered by Hostile life forms and have to shoot our way out.”

“Will we be cornered by Hostile life forms?”

“No idea, but there was something about creatures on the surface. You need to practice with the comms, and strip and clean Mr. Sig Sauer and Mr. Glock, whom I’ve laid out for you, ready for those intimate encounters.”

“I don’t want to take Mr. Glock,” said Suzanne, regarding the pistol sourly. “I feel we’ve grown apart.”

“A couple more dates, Cruise, and when the action gets heavy, you’ll learn to appreciate Mr. Glock’s qualities. If we find your sister, and we’re still in ammunition, you can introduce her to Mr. Sig Sauer.”

“I don’t think any gun is Eve’s type.”

“Well, the date Igor is bringing to the party will be the real decider. He’s taking a machine gun I picked up at a bargain sale. An older model, but 7.62-millimeter shells at a good delivery rate will keep Hostile aliens away from the annoying cruise director and friends.”

 

As Suzanne had feared, Fermat II proved to be a forbidding, desolate lump of rock with a huge, deep gash along the equator. Rods brought The Max in and left her suspended, the engines ticking over, just above the surface and back from the northern edge of the gigantic rift valley. They took the shuttle through the thin winds that howled along the precipice top and over the chasm, to give Suzanne the first proper view of the valley that had swallowed her sister. Below them clouds drifted slowly along the valley, and below the clouds was a green valley floor cut by a single, wandering band of blue.

“Must be plant life,” said Rods, “terraforming has gone on apace since the last survey, and that must be a sizable river if we can see it at this distance.”

Suzanne pressed her face against the port side flight deck viewing screen of the shuttle as they descended hoping to see some sign of her sister. Instead, she noticed several giant cones rising at intervals from the valley floor.

“Are those hills natural? They look regular.”

“Dunno,” said Rods, “but there’s supposed to be a building somewhere. On a hill, close to the river. We’ll look for that first.” They cruised up the valley – in the same direction as the rotation, or East – for a time until the vegetation become distinctly sparser, revealing more of the valley’s dark, rocky floor and there were no more hills, so they turned back and dropped lower, following the river, which flowed west. The shuttle had telescopic lenses that could be set to scan, revealing a landscape of stunted trees and bushes growing out of a tortured landscape of rocks covered by green plants that Suzanne realized, with a start, must be a form of grass. There were groups of roaming brown dots which closer inspection showed were mini buffalos.

“Quite an eco-system,” muttered Rods, but otherwise neither human said much. To someone who had spent their life on earth, the landscape would seem monotonous and unappealing, but for the sheer size of it. The valley was wide enough for even the vast cliffs to seem distant and for the sun to shine on the river and much of its catchment. But to Rods and in particular Suzanne, who only knew earth through holograms, it was a magical place. The atmosphere on the surface was about the equivalent of three thousand meters above sea level on Earth meaning that they could breathe easily but should not do any violent activity until they had acclimatized. They both wanted to get out but finding the building that the Dawn Treader colonists had discovered came first.

They cruised on, drifting lower until Suzanne could see the mini buffalos drinking at the river with her own eyes. They came to a line of small, irregularly shaped hills, boulders heaped on each other with grass growing out of them at all angles and beyond that the ocean – on Earth it would have been called a large lake but to the two humans it was a huge, rolling ocean stretching across the valley and west as far as they could see.

“My stars!” exclaimed Suzanne. “We could go swimming! Would it have fish?”

“Swimming?” said Igor, who had been sitting in the passenger section for the trip but now came into the pilot’s cabin.

“You go in the water, Igor,” said Suzanne.

“Questions and recreation later Cruise,” said Rods. “That must be the building.”

Gazing at the water, Suzanne had not noticed the structure, which was a collection of loosely linked one and two story buildings built of bricks cut from the valley sub strata, so that it seemed to grow from the valley itself. Beside it was the missing supply pod from the Dawn Treader but no signs of any of the colonists.

They put down at what was meant to be the landing field, a flat, overgrown field just beside the structure, and stepped out. They had coats on with the hoods tied up over peaked caps and cream on their faces, as they knew ultraviolet radiation would be high, but Suzanne could still feel a slight breeze wafting up the valley, on her face.

“Oh my,” she said, realizing what she was feeling for the first time in her life, natural wind on her face. “Oh my! Oh MY!” She stood for a moment, enraptured. It was cold but crisp. Invigorating.

“Now this is the place where little Emily should grow up,” she said firmly, coming out of her rapture. “She should live in a house near the river and play here under the shade with her friends and have a fairy party for her birthday.”

“Fairy party?”

“I read about very young children having them on Earth, a long time ago. Some girl dresses up as a fairy with a wand.” She raised her hand as if it was holding a wand. Or they could have clowns come. I would have liked to have had a fairy party when I was a child.”

“Well at the moment before little Emily gets to her fairy party she’ll have to avoid being eaten.”

“Eaten? By what?”

“By that! See in the slight dip in the ground, about mid distance in front of us before the tree line.”

Suzanne saw a wicked looking snout, just visible in the grass, and before she knew it Mr. Glock was in her hands, safety catch off.

“You and Mr. Glock are getting along better.”

“I could grow to like him,” said Suzanne.

Rods laughed. “Finger off the trigger, Cruise. Lay it alongside the pistol. I don’t want to shoot this guy unless I have to. It’s just doing its job - although that job includes trying to eat us.”

“Another creature. East. Short range,” said Igor, who had also been taking in the view, but for different reasons.

“Say, what?” Rods whirled, picked up a stone and threw it hard at a clump of long grass. Something shrieked and shot into view. It was another creature, like the one in front of them. It was lion-like but with a longer snout comparable to that of a lizard.

“A Zard lizard lion. A Lard! These are predators from the Zard home planet,” said Rods. The Lard hissed loudly at them, flicking a forked tongue. “These things wanted to ambush us. No wonder the Zards are so good at ambushing. Keep an eye on our other friend.”

Suzanne looked around to see that the other Lard had crept out of its hiding place and was edging towards them. She brought up her pistol and it stopped. Rods picked up another rock and threw it at the second Lard.

“G’on, get lost!” The Lard started when the rock hit it, hissed noisily and reluctantly circled away, glaring malevolently at them. “Typical predator behavior. Not sure what it’s up against, so it leaves. Now you get rid of yours.”

“Huh?”
“I got rid of mine. You get rid of yours. Throw something at it and shout insults.”
“I don’t know any insults,” said Suzanne, lowering her pistol. She and the first Lard eyed one another uncertainly.