Episode 7

 

 

Liquid nitrogen steam swirled around the 120 metre high booster stage of the titan class rocket. The cockpit speakers crackled into life.

“Launch minus ten minutes. Oxygen feed and cables disconnected. Routing to internal power. Mother One. You have control.”

“Thank you Houston”

 

Rose looked up at the soaring structure as she and the other guests waited for the happy couple to emerge from the cathedral door. Cold stone spires stabbing into the blue sky as if to wound heaven.

‘A fitting tomb for my heart,’ she thought, looking at the sky-scraping sarcophagus in front of her.

The service had been beautiful and breathtaking. He had stood next to his bride in his white starched commander’s uniform, looking alarmingly like the larger than life-size commemorative statue of the happy couple that was perched on a plinth behind the priest.

The cold stone statue had been commissioned by the Federation Space Corps as a combined wedding and farewell present; a fitting tribute to the brave couple who were going on the most daring space rescue mission ever attempted.

‘Nothing says goodbye like a block of concrete,’ Rose thought acidly, ‘and in case he doesn’t make it back, they can just chisel R.I.P. on the base above his name. Commander Altheus Darck.’

 She had never felt so low in all her life. A shiver ran down her spine as a fleeting premonition darkened her already depressed thoughts. Something bad was going to happen. She just couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was attending a funeral and not a wedding. Her already jarred nerves were set a-jangling anew as the church bells clanged out in a chaotic cacophony that shattered the peaceful country air and expelled a black flurry of crows who darkly circled the ancient towers, cawing out their omen of death. Then the doors opened and the happy couple tripped lightly down the stairs, floating in a cloud of confetti, love and laughter. The heaviness of her dampened spirit in response to this happy scene made her feel like the wicked witch at a fairy tale wedding. Each thud of her heart fell like a tombstone to the earth. Her son was leaving her for another woman. She turned to them and tried to smile, but her face failed her. Her son had been her whole life. More so after her husband had died so many years ago. He was buried beneath the floor of that very same cathedral, under a slab of black marble. The bride had in fact walked over his dead body to get to the altar.

Her gaze turned towards the gravestones among the grass. How she longed for that peaceful repose. Her son was gone. Her life was over. It was just a pity that she continued to breathe.

 

It was a picture-perfect day for the reception party: feathery cumulous nimbus painting the blue sky here and there in soft watery colours, the yellow sunshine bathing the summery landscape in a golden glory of green grass lawns with bright yellow dandelions. Sparkling fountains played soft fluted melodies, sprinkled with happy laughter and the noises of children playing. There were blossoms and bowers and showers of white chiffon, and laces over smiling pretty faces amongst the young green leaves and laurels of a gorgeous spring day. The bride was blushing and beautiful, the bridesmaids bustlingly tripped over each other in their efforts to make everything perfect for the picture.

April Darck, nee Sweeting, bursting with budding enthusiasm and breathlessness, stood pertly to attention as if her healthy tanned satiny smooth skin could barely contain her excitement. Beneath her long bridal veil, her red and white Space Academy uniform was crisp and neat and well fitted to every exuberant curve of her body. Every inch of her oozed natural full blooded health and vitality, topped off by an innocent juvenile joie de vivre. She looked like the eternal bride. She was the kind of girl that would always be a virgin…no matter what. All who saw her fell in love with her. Men and women were drawn to her perfection like a magnet.

But she only had eyes for her husband. She loved him in no conscious way. She couldn’t even give you a reason why she liked him. She just knew he was her better-half as if it had been written in the stars. Like a command from God she obeyed her love blindly and willingly, as if this union was as natural as her next breath. She was complete. Her smile was devastating, and many, many hearts melted that day, unnoticed and unknown by her in her everythingness. She never even suspected that temperatures rose around her because she ignited admiration and desire everywhere she walked. Not only was she exhilarated to near hysteria by the thought that this was her wedding day, but she was also overawed with honour and pride at the two of them being specially chosen to serve mankind. She sighed to herself in happiness and looked around at the crowd gathered under the magnificent silky white marquee.

Her husband, in contrast, was a quiet, self-contained man, standing there in his white Commodore’s suit, he looked every inch the silent chiselled hero of popular fiction. Square jaw and firm, clear, but kindly eyes: the epitome of patience and calm confidence. Who else was more qualified to lead this expedition? Rose wished it was someone else, but would never say so. She would never do anything to spoil her son’s happiness, although it seemed to increase as hers decreased. Is this what life was all about? She couldn’t understand it. It didn’t seem right that she should be discarded like an empty bottle once her job was over. She had given everything, and now she had nothing. Well, at least she could postpone the final dreadful moment of parting. She was to travel with them as far as the launch way-station overlooking the wormhole. And although her constitution was getting too fragile for such a rigorous journey she would endure anything for a few precious extra months with her beloved son.

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TUNE IN TO NEXT WEEKS EXCITING EPISODE

Dutch awoke as cold as ice and shivering from the collision. She couldn’t see anything and for a moment thought she was blind until she remembered what happened. She shook her head and concentrated.

“Are you hurt?” she heard an anxious Sweet Mary say, her arms wrapped tightly around Dutch.

“I’m okay sweetie. You stop worrying,” she said and then passed out again.

 

 “Don’t struggle – go with me,” said a masculine voice in her ear as her senses started returning to her. This was not what she wanted to hear. There was a torch beam in her face and she could hear other male voices bustling around her and cries and groans coming from the wounded somewhere in the darkness. She tried to struggle but she didn’t have the strength to resist. Strong hands held her immobile as her arms were strapped to her sides and she felt herself being pulled through the darkness, torches flashing here and there as the men navigated her through the chaos. She could feel Sweet Mary’s weight tugging at her belt and knew they were still attached to one another.

These men knew what they were doing and they were well prepared. Within minutes the girls were bundled through the security door and into the flight deck area where the emergency lights were on.

“Okay. That’s the last one.”

“Right: close the door and let’s get started.”

The man turned Dutch to face him.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said kindly. “We just need your help. If you promise not to cause any trouble we will untie you.”

Dutch was on the verge of telling him to go and get knotted when her befuddled brain started to clear. There was nothing she could do all trussed up like a Christmas turkey. Best would be to behave herself and then see what happens.

“Okay, I promise,” she said grudgingly.

The man took a deep look at her, trying to judge whether she meant it or not. He didn’t have much of a choice though. Their whole escape plan hinged on her.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Untie her.”

They released Dutch from her constraints.

“Just relax. We’re not going to hurt you. We just need you to fly the ship.”

The man wasn’t overly worried about her being a problem. Firstly, she was a woman, and secondly, it was hard to start a fight in zero gravity where all the men were armed and wearing magnetic contact-boots that allowed them to walk on any metal surface.

“How did you know I was a pilot?”

“From your files,” said the man.

“What do we do with her?” said another man pointing to Sweet Mary floating close by and seemingly attached to Dutch by an umbilical chord.

“No passengers. Cut her loose and put her with the others.”

“She stays with me,” said Dutch in a firm voice.

“We don’t have any extra room in here. Put her in the main hold with the others.”

One of the goons untied Sweet Mary and began pulling her towards the door. Dutch grabbed hold of the back of the G-seat and launched herself into a swinging arc. Before anyone could register what was going on she pivoted round the chair and slammed her big feet into the man’s head. The blow was all the more stunning as his magnetic boots didn’t let go and held him tight to the floor. In a flash Dutch had removed his plasma pistol from his holster and hooked an arm around Sweet Mary. Then she wrapped her legs around the now unconscious man to anchor herself and brandished the pistol at the rest of the frozen crew. Nobody had moved more than a centimetre.

The great thing about a plasma gun is that it only disrupts human anatomies and not the ship’s hull. An ordinary bullet stood a chance of going through the hull and causing massive depressurization, sucking everyone out into space through a virtual pinhole. Also, a plasma gun wasn’t fatal, unless of course you had a weak heart. It just disarranged the central nervous system for a few hours, not unlike a massive, prolonged electrical shock.

“Stop. Awright. Jesus. We won’t touch her. She can stay if you want,” said the leader with a placating gesture of his hands. He had badly underestimated the situation.

“I want nothing to do with this,” said Dutch. “I’m already in for murder, and if they catch me they’ll terminate me.”

“You don’t have a choice lady. You’re already implicated, along with the rest of us. We’re all terminal here if we don’t do something.”

Dutch turned to see that all eyes were on her. She felt angry at having been dragged into such a compromising situation, and she didn’t really believe that any cockamamie plan they had cooked up would work. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before. She tightened her trigger finger on the plasma pistol, just itching to take it out on someone. She looked hard at the guy giving orders. He wasn’t your run of the mill thug. He was quiet spoken with intelligent eyes and a good humoured lift to his mouth. Probably some white collar criminal. The brains behind all this. Well, she hoped he’d come up with a good one.

“So what’s the plan?” she said, relaxing her grip a little.

“Slight course change.”

“I bet.”

The man gave her a wry smile, and she had to admit that he was actually quite good looking.

Satisfied that she was onside, he turned to his motley crew and said, “Okay will someone get the spin going.”

There were five men sitting at various consoles busily punching in numbers and running off radar readings.

“And do it slowly. There are a lot of people in there and some of them are probably hurt already; just nice and easy.”

As the drum began to spin Dutch could feel her weight coming back. It was like climbing out of a swimming pool. She could feel herself get heavier and drift towards the floor.  It wasn’t a pleasant feeling being so heavy again. Sweet Mary moaned in her arms and Dutch eased her gently to the floor.

“It’s going to be alright. Just trust me, okay?” she said with a hug. Sweet Mary nodded and sniffed.

Dutch turned back to the leader as he switched on the intercom and addressed the ship.

“Hello everyone, this is your captain speaking. Sorry about that little hiccup; just a technical problem that’ll be fixed in no time. In the meantime, these are your new living arrangements. The prisoners are all free to come and go as you please but the guards will be locked up permanently. However, the same schedule will apply as far as thrust is concerned. Eight hours in every twenty four you will hear the alarm and strap yourselves into your G-seats as per usual. The rest of the time you can do pretty much what you want. Right now I would suggest you take advantage of spin-time and get yourselves sorted out and bandaged up as best you can.”

 

N

 

The course change was going to cause all sorts of problems because this barrel wasn’t designed to thrust at an oblique angle – especially at these massive speeds. It could go forward or it could turn around 180 degrees and go the other way. But that was all. So unless she could initiate this course change with the greatest of delicacy, the ship was going to collapse like an empty tin can being trampled on by a cow.

She had hardly let herself entertain the possibility that they might escape. Those kind of hopes are too dangerous to harbour, because if it didn’t work then life just wouldn’t be worth living. Her mind briefly brushed by an image of her and Sweet Mary, free somewhere…walking down a street, looking in shop windows…. ‘Stop!’ she told herself. ‘Just concentrate.’

 

Dutch crossed her fingers and tentatively engaged the directional boosters to line the ship up on its new course. Then she cut the spin and eased the main throttle forward very carefully.

 

 

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AND BE SURE NOT TO MISS NEXT WEEKS EXCITING EPISODE OF SWEET DREAMS

 

 

The purulent pureed potatoes plopped into a hollow of an indented plastic tray called a Pig Pan. A thin film of burnt gravy with bits of food of an indeterminate nature was then splashed on top. A yellow squadge of congealed rice pudding completed the complement. No one complained. No one ever complained about the food because you never knew what they would put in it if you did. The smell of rancid fat, old dishwater and sweat hung like a film of grease in the air. All feeding halls had the same smell.

Holding their trays firmly, Dutch and Sweet Mary walked down the row of tables bolted to the floor and chose one away from all the others. Dutch picked up her plastic spork (a combination spoon and fork) and listlessly pushed the mush around in circles.

“What’s the matter?” asked Sweet Mary.

Dutch shrugged. Not really worth trying to talk in all this noise. Nearly two hundred inmates all laughing and shouting as people do when you’ve been in solitary for a while. Plus the telescreens blasting out a car chase with sirens and machine-gun fire…killing and rape and murder, just the right type of film to play to a bunch of hardened criminals ready to bust. She looked over towards the wall of metal mesh dividing the women and the men’s section. To help pass the time, she and most of the other women would scour the talent on the other side to see if there was anyone they fancied.

Men and women lived and ate separately, and the guards made small fortunes out of smuggling them in and out of each others cells. But Dutch found that men were not worth the trouble – sex was generally a disappointing business with them. She could do better by herself, but she still looked anyway. Sweet Mary had no such interests and hardly even glanced at the men. She was just too glad to be away from them.

Dutch’s attention was suddenly drawn to a few guys roughhousing round the food counter. Several guards were already on the move to break it up. Dutch didn’t like the look of this. She glanced back and saw another group of men stealthily sidling towards the engineering-room door under cover of the distraction. There was only one guard there and even his attention was on the fight.

Dutch’s guts gave a lurch as she saw him go down with a blow to the back of the head. She could sense things were about to get out of hand.

“Come on.” She grabbed Sweet Mary’s arm and swept her towards the exit door, sending her plate of food clattering to the floor. The noise and chaos was ramping up on the other side as the roughhousing turned into a fully fledged fistfight and even the women were now crowding up against the mesh and urging them on. The tannoys crackled and hissed and a mechanical voice intoned for ‘all prisoners to immediately return to their cells’.

The next thing there was the sound of a huge explosion and everyone was free floating in the air, bodies cart-wheeling every-which-way in the zero gravity. A food tray floated past Dutch’s face and she just hoped that the explosion, whatever it was, had not breached the hull. She desperately looked round for Sweet Mary and noticed a familiar blonde bob of hair in the distance. This was her element. Zero gravity to her was like water to a fish. She was so practiced in getting around, it was almost second nature to her. She kicked herself off from the wall and sailed across the room. Halfway across someone ricocheted into her and everything turned into a crazy game of billiards. Some people, unable to get to a surface whereby to propel themselves were hopelessly trying to swim through the air with flailing arms. Dutch took hold of one of these bodies and used it to launch herself forward. On this attempt she managed to grab Sweet Mary by the scruff of her neck.

“Hold onto me and keep still.” Dutch quickly tied their prison belts firmly together then used a nearby body to launch them towards the door. They were careening through bits of food and undulating globs of orange juice when the second explosion came. This one was bigger. She reckoned the men had blown their way through the primary door that led to the main Ops centre. From long years of experience Dutch knew what was coming and instinctively hugged Sweet Mary to her chest. She was fleetingly surprised at how small and softly plump she was, and the intoxicating smell of her perfume nearly made her lose track of the situation. A split second later the concussion ripped through the hall like a tidal wave and they were plucked out of the air as if by a giant hand and hurled towards the wall. Dutch managed somehow to twist them around and put herself between Sweet Mary and the fast approaching wall.

Then the lights went out and the chaos was complete.

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TUNE IN TO NEXT WEEKS EXCITING EPISODE

 

 

 

The fast bleep of a sensor alarm and the hum and grind of the laser array turning to take aim woke her up. The guns commenced firing with a soft ‘suck-thump’ sound, clearing the path ahead. The lasers could vaporise anything from a small rock to an asteroid. After six months of acceleration they were travelling close to fifty percent the speed of light and at that speed a grain of sand took on the characteristics of an express train. The 100mm thick aluminium-titanium alloy hull might as well have been polystyrene in such a situation.

The prison ship was basically a huge rotating drum with rows of cells against the outer hull divided by corridors. There was also a recreation area, mess hall, and secure prison-warders quarters. A smaller drum within the large one occupied most of the central core and housed the gigantic fusion generators, fuel tanks and the food freezers. At the thrusting end of the great drum was the flight deck and engineering section with its control panels, computers and read-outs. The flight deck and the flight-crew quarters were separated from the main prison area by a titanium wall a foot thick, impenetrable by any small-arms weapons. The hatch linking the prison area to the flight deck was double coded and safety locked.

Each prison cell had two beds, its own washbasin and toilet, which you had to remember to close during acceleration and deceleration as the drum couldn’t spin during those times and there was literally no G force to hold things down. G-seats were bolted to the wall where the inmates strapped themselves in when the main engines fired for forward thrust. This happened eight hours out of every twenty four to keep increasing speed. Eight hours, immobilized in a seat at more than 5G, is no fun. But that’s what was needed if they were to get to their destination in their lifetime. Once thrust is cut, the lateral boosters are fired up again to spin the drum, much like the wall-of-death in an amusement park. In space however, you can walk upright on the wall quite comfortably, except for the small sideways velocity from the spin which causes you to walk at a slight angle all the time. But you got used to it. Even lying down, Dutch could feel the slight tug of the centrifuge.

Suddenly the feet vanished and a face appeared in their place.

“Would you mind? I gotta go.” Sweet Mary’s face twisted in an agony of embarrassment.

“Oh Christ.” Dutch gave an exasperated snort, turned over on her stomach, and put the pillow over her head without saying a further word.

Sweet Mary hopped lightly off the bunk and tip-toed across the cold metal floor to the toilet in the corner. This was the one thing she never got used to, and even Dutch, who was quite used to working and showering, eating and shitting in front of a bunch of tough guys, would never admit how difficult she found it to go in front of Sweet Mary. Having to go to the toilet in front of each other bred an unspoken empathy for one another, like sisters under the skin, so they did their best to pretend not to be there at those times.

As irritable as she appeared to be, Dutch had come to feel very kindly about Sweet Mary. She latched on quite early to the fact that Sweet Mary felt ugly and miserable without her makeup. She had terrible anxieties when she didn’t have any on - even when there was only Dutch there. Somehow Dutch had managed to get hold of some for her. She even managed to get hold of a contraband razor from one of the other inmates for her to shave her legs, and some other little feminine knick knacks that had Sweet Mary in tears of thankfulness.

“I like to look pretty,” she said. “It makes me feel better.”

“Sure. You look fine anyway. If anyone needs make-up it’s me. Not that it’d help much anyway.”

Sweet Mary sat up on her bunk.

“I can put some on you if you like. I think you’d look fine.”

“No thanks.”

“Go on.”

“No.”

Sweet Mary stretched down a leg and lowered herself onto Dutch’s bunk.

“Go on. There’s nothing else to do.”

“I’m thinking,” said Dutch, trying to put her off.

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh,” said Sweet Mary, loosening the cap of the precious moisturizer jar and shifted closer to Dutch, tucking her feet underneath her. “Here we go.”

Dutch just sat there with a dead-pan expression on her face, undecided whether to stop her and hurt her feelings, or just sit there and endure it.

The shock of Sweet Mary touching her face was enormous. She’d forgotten, or maybe never known, how wonderfully gentle human physical contact could be. If she had been gay she’d have fallen head over heels in love with her at that moment.

Sweet Mary’s fingers were cool and soft, the lotion was fragrant and soothing, and soon she drifted off in a delightful fantasy as Sweet Mary hummed and busied herself with beautifying Dutch’s square-jawed, big-boned, coarse-skinned face. Neither of them wanted the moment to end.

“There you go,” said a smiling Sweet Mary eventually, handing her a little mirror.

“Christ, I look like a tranny tart,” she said slapping the mirror out of her hand and causing it to shatter on the floor.

Sweet Mary was used to these angry outbursts. She quietly collected her makeup and climbed back up to her bunk.

“I don’t see the point of make-up,” said Dutch in an attempt to make it better, but only making things worse. “Only good for prostitutes.”

Dutch regretted the words before they were even out of her mouth. She felt a pang of remorse rising in her throat to choke her. It was the worst possible thing she could have said to her, because for a long time now she had her suspicions about Sweet Mary. She was almost sure she was a null-whore.

“You think I’m not a nice person, don’t you?” Sweet Mary sniffed reflectively. “But I am what I am.”

Dutch watched the feet rub self-consciously against each other.

“I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”

“But you think it anyway.”

“No I don’t,” she argued. “Anyway, nobody’s perfect. At least you didn’t murder anybody,” she answered softly.

There was a pause and the feet fell silent for a while.

“No. But I’m still here; in prison.”

They let that truism ring around the walls for a while.

“I did things.” Sweet Mary’s voice was like a whisper in a confessional.

Dutch waited. She really didn’t want to know but she couldn’t help herself.

“What?”

“Things.” She somehow managed to squeeze the whole world of pain into that single word. “He made me…..” she stopped again.

Sweet Mary was quiet for a long time.

“Nothing,” she said. “That’s why I’m here,” she concluded.

Somehow this enigmatic statement made sense to Dutch. Sweet Mary was that kind of girl, loyal to the end. Only a whore could still love the man who betrayed her. It is pride that feels betrayed. Love lives only in the lowly.

Sweet Mary spoke again. “Anyway. He is what he is,” and then under her breath, “He did what he had to do.”

Her toe twitched briefly.

Dutch knew what these null-whores were used for. Senators and statesmen, celebrities, powerful and respectable men (and women) looking for a bit of the other. They were usually looking for someone they could hurt. Mama’s boys with an axe to grind, needing to let off a bit of steam. Jaded, bored, arrogant men, spoiled rotten and needing more and more depraved activities to satisfy them. That’s why null-whores were so popular. They were the equivalent of a human toilet. They could do anything to them and they wouldn’t resist. They couldn’t resist.

Whatever her story was, Dutch was beginning to think she’d be better off not knowing. Poor kid. The horrible thing is that the operation can only be done to very young girls (or boys). Implanting a null-wave transmitter in the frontal lobes of an adult would be fatal. So it was probably her father who had sold her down the river to supplement the family income.

The null-wave transmitter made a person unable to defend themselves from other people’s untoward advances. It forced the subject to stand (or lie down) and take the pain, humiliation and disgust of what humanity was capable of…what they all had bottled up inside of them.

Most of the time she would be normal…more or less. It was only when she was forced to do something she didn’t want to do, something that frightened her, that the limiters would kick in and suppress the neurotransmitter noradrenalin. This had an effect like a powerful sedative. Adrenaline is the body’s natural defence mechanism. The null-wave transmitter neutralises the fight or flight response of the person and leaves them wide open to abuse. They can’t defend themselves and they can’t run away. People like that are very vulnerable and probably wouldn’t survive long without a protector. Dutch stifled the spasm of outrage at what men could do to women and looked at the feet again. Jesus what a fate. And there was no way of reversing it. By now the brain had grown around the null wave transmitter and no surgery in the world could remove it.

“Hey, listen. I’m sorry. That was out of line. If you must know, I think you’re great. I think you’re a lovely girl.” That was the longest speech Dutch had ever given in her life. And, for Dutch, the inordinate amount of sentiment it contained was tantamount to a declaration of love.

She watched as the toes above her scrunched in relief that the fight was over. She knew every mood of those feet. The occasional twirl of the toes when she was happy. The swaying from side to side when she was singing.

“Did you really murder someone?”

 

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TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE

There was no escaping those feet. They were always there. It was bitterly cold in here, but her feet always stuck out the end of her blanket…all pink and perfect. They were there when she opened her eyes in the morning and they were there when she went to sleep at night. She’d been watching them for the last five months, presenting themselves to her from the upper bunk. Feet are very personal. One shouldn’t go waggling them in some strangers face. They’re too intimate. It was like staring into someone’s sole. (Ha, ha) Often in moments of irritation she had wanted to pull on those little piggies and make them go wee-wee all the way home. But often too, to her own surprise, when she found herself awake in the middle of the night when one is prone to strange thoughts, she had been sorely tempted to lay her cheek against their soft warm rosiness and kiss them.

They were very clean: for a convict’s feet. Always clipped and cured. Very pretty, with slightly fallen arches that gave them a look of vulnerability. She felt very differently about the owner of the feet, as if the person and the feet were two different people. She felt more intimate with the feet than the person. She actually had a love-hate relationship with those feet that almost amounted to a secret love-affair. Through all the empty hours it had built up into an obsession. Sometimes in the gloom, if she stared at them too long, they would begin to flow outside their boundaries and even change their shape, shifting like ghostly wraiths running over the sheets and reaching down towards her, and she would have to pull her imagination up sharply. She spent more time talking to the feet (in her head) than she did to the owner. Without her relationship to those feet, unrequited as it was, she was sure she would never have made it this far without going crazy. Dutch was normally a physically active person. Being the pilot slash loading engineer of an Ore-transport ship had kept her running, lifting, hauling and exerting herself to near exhaustion for many hours of the day. After work she would continue rough-housing and arm-wrestling with her comrades, drinking and raising hell till the early hours. Here she was locked up in a cell hardly big enough to spit in and spent most of the time lying on her back…staring at the feet.

Often in the mornings, when all were still asleep, she would lie and keep watch over those feet. She knew every contour and wrinkle. She knew the shape of every toe, some slightly deformed from wearing narrow high heel shoes. Contemplating them had a great soothing effect on her and often she found herself mentally stroking them, as if they were a pet.

Soon they would start to twitch. Just once at first and then lapse into stillness again for a while. Then they would twitch again and Dutch would know she was starting to surface from her dreams. Another twitch – a long pause – and then twice….and then the twirling and stretching out of the toes as she finally woke up and the cot would creak and sag above her. Then the owner of the feet would give a yawn and a sigh and sink back into a blissful doze while Dutch waited patiently.

“Good morning,” she’d finally say.

The day had begun.

 

Somewhere a door clanged and someone said something…and then silence. Just the soft humming of the scrubbers, recycling the same old stale air. Just like this station was trying to recycle her. She shivered and turned in her thin grey blanket. The cold light from the corridor spilled through the bars of the cell. The chilly metal walls dripped noisily with condensation.

“What do you think it will be like? When we get there?” came the disembodied voice from the top bunk.

“It’ll be just the same as here.” Dutch’s voice rang out unnaturally curt and loud. “One cell’s the same as the next.”

“Do you think they’ll put us together?” she said, her voice was filled with concern. “I mean…we’re friends aren’t we?”

The silence crept over them like a chilly fog up a hillside.

 

The nights were long and Dutch had plenty of time to think about what she had done to her husband. It still made her smile involuntarily every time she recalled the fatal scene. She got the same kind of perverse pleasure one would get out of squashing a mean bug. It gave her a kick on the one hand, on the other, if she could have that moment over, she wouldn’t have done it. She hadn’t meant to kill him. It’s just the devil finally got into her.

They had been co-workers on the same ore-liner for many years, with the occasional fling to let off steam, before they decided to throw in the towel and get married. It wasn’t love really, just convenient. After the wedding she was quite happy to continue with the same old same old, but something flipped inside of him. He never was mister nice-guy before, but owning a wife seemed to tip him over the edge. The problem was she could do most anything better than him, and she was a hell of a lot smarter. None of this had been a problem until they tied the knot. Then he began to put her down whenever they were in company, making snide jokes about her which of course she couldn’t really complain about seeing that they were ‘just jokes for God’s sake’.

In the beginning she would just grin and bear it. She understood that he had a fragile face to save and she was a bigger man than him so she didn’t pay him much mind until one night, after she had involuntarily let fly a witty repartee, he knocked out a couple of her teeth. Teeth were a premium way out there in the middle of nowhere because dentures were hard to come by and their staple diet of dog biscuits not so easy to chew without them. Also, she didn’t look so pretty anymore. Not that she was ever a raving beauty, but now she looked like a corn-cob hill-billy broad to boot.

He must have got to like the feeling because soon he began hitting on her for no reason and she had to use all her whiles to protect what remained of her Colgate smile. Things went on in this vein for a while until one day there was an incident.  She was running the control board during a pickup and he was E.V.A. when a retro rocket on the incoming ore train malfunctioned and he began screaming bloody-blue-murder at her why-didn’t-she-open-the-fucking-hatch-you-stupid-whore-get-me-out-of-here and all the while she watched dispassionately as his end drew nigh, her finger tap-tapping the vital release switch on the cargo bay air-lock ever so lightly as she contemplated her husband and his just deserts. He didn’t say please. That was all it boiled down to in her head. He just didn’t say please. She would have gotten away with it if the Super hadn’t walked in while she hesitated too long and her husband died. The Super happened to be her husband’s brother, and she was busted.

So here she was. On a prison shuttle on her way to the Delta Section Penal colony because space protocol was sacrosanct. It was too dangerous out here. Fatal accidents were common place enough without being given a helping hand by a hormonal wife. She never got a chance to explain her side of the story. No hearing, no nothing. No one was interested. The fact that she would never do it again and that everyone knew the bastard had literally begged for it didn’t mean a thing. You don’t fuck around in space. Ever. The funny thing is, that in her dreams, she always flicked the switch in plenty of time to save her husband from being crushed against the hull by the runaway ore-sled.

She looked up at the feet again. Why couldn’t she have had pretty feet like that? She stuck her big galumphing things out the end of the bed and waggled her ugly porkers.

“Ugh.”

Then she felt an unaccustomed rush of tenderness for her own malformed manlike body and two burning tears sprang up in the corner of her eyes.

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EPISODE 2

 

 

 How I got here is a bit of a long story, but I’ll cut it short. There was this guy you see, on Alpha Centuari, and we had a little misunderstanding over a poker game. He seemed to think I had cheated him and wanted his money back. I pretended to go to the loo, snuck out the back door and managed to get to my space ship with inches to spare. I blasted off a few minutes before him and ran like hell. He must’ve had some very sophisticated sensors on board because he followed my exhaust signature like a dog after a rabbit. In fact he dogged me all the way through the asteroid belt and I just couldn’t shake him off. His ship was a lot faster than mine, not to mention armed to the teeth. I was hoping he wouldn’t follow me as far as General Outer Defence Station 5 because of all the Federation cruisers and battleships hanging around there, but nothing seemed to put him off the scent, he just kept on coming. He fired at me again on the approach to G.O.D. 5 but thankfully missed. But only by a mile. This was getting too close for comfort.

Before he had time to recharge his plasma cannon I pulled sharply around G.O.D. 5, coming as close as I dared and then skimmed across the face of the wormhole hoping to generate enough G’s to slingshot me outa there. Not the most sensible manoeuvre but preferable to death by laser section. The only thing I had miscalculated was the size of the wormhole. I wasn’t expecting it to be that big. A gigantic whirlpool the size of a planet, twisting away into nothingness.

Federation flares were fired at me as I passed Station 5 and my radio exploded into life with a series of urgent warnings.

‘Damned cops,’ I thought. ‘Trust them to arrest the wrong guy.’ I ignored them and piled on the speed. This was a matter of some urgency and I wasn’t going to let a few figurative yellow lines stop me. The radio continued to squawk and shriek at me.

“This is Station 5 to Mining Vessel 385GW. Please be advised that you have entered a no-go zone and are in dangerous proximity to the wormhole. Please reverse your position and proceed to Alpha Station Dock 6 for questioning.”

“What for? I haven’t done anything,” I argued, just to give me some more time.

“You have entered a restricted area and are in violation of Federation code 35624.1205.”

“Okay, okay. And just where is Dock number whatever you said?”

“We have already sent you the co-ordinates in a code-red package. Please expedite.”

 “Here’s the problem base. I got this guy who wants to kill me. If you look at your screens more carefully you should be able to see him taking aim at my ass. So I ain’t stopping for nothing.”

“Station 5 to Mining Vessel 385GW, that is not acceptable. Please change trajectory to sent co-ordinates and commence deceleration.”

And as if this wasn’t enough I was having a bit of a problem with my slingshot calculations. They weren’t working out so well. Instead of getting further away from the wormhole, I was getting closer. I could feel the gravity-well slowly getting hold of my ship.

 

I managed to escape my pursuer, but not the wormhole. After a three day tunnel ride through hyperspace I was spewed out the other end into a solar system that my computers had never even heard of and couldn’t find on any of their star maps. I didn’t have long to worry about the problem though, my sensors immediately picked up some off-the-chart mineral readings from a gigantic asteroid nearby and I knew I had, in old prospecting terms, struck it rich. Rich enough to pay off my protagonist and have enough left over for a life of luxury.

It took me a little over a week to load my little ship up to the gills and start heading back to the wormhole. Hopefully the wormhole worked both ways. It didn’t bear thinking about if it didn’t. To increase my chances though, I gave my old bucket as much G thrust as she could stand without coming apart at the seams and aimed it straight down the wormholes throat.

But, I never made it that far. Something came between us and here I am, marooned on the strangest looking planet I’d ever seen.

My stomach growled, reminding me that I still had to collect breakfast this morning. I fired up the mech suit headed for one of the pods when the landscape beneath my feet began to heave and buckle, like some mythical beast twitching in its sleep.

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Prologue - Breakfast

I began to slide over the slippery slope down the smooth mountainside, picking up speed as the boosters kicked in, gliding low and fast over the glassy gleaming surface glittering green in the weak rays of a dying red-giant sun. The only blemishes on the landscape were some strange craters at irregular intervals, as if superheated meteors had slammed into the hard crust and melted through. Whatever these holes were, each was inhabited by a gigantic silver spiral-worm that cork-screwed up into the Jovian dawn and tried to grab me whenever I flew near one of them. There was no avoiding them really because my only food, and theirs it seemed, pulsating pods oozing globs of gelatinous goo perched precariously on whip like stalks, was located round the rim of their craters and they kept a watchful eye (if they had eyes) on their crop. To harvest these pods I had to run the gauntlet of wriggling worms, slicing them off with the built-in laser, or failing that, ripping them out by the roots with my power-assisted mech-arms and hurling them into outer space.

Every morning early, when the worms were still a bit sleepy and slow moving, I would make the run to fetch breakfast. No doubt a pizza delivery boy in Manhattan would scoff at the dangers I faced, but at least the food he delivered was edible. Well…relatively speaking. Very unlike the slimy balls of yellow smelly, glutinous gunk I had to eat. Still, it kept me alive since the galley of my ship, together with all the compressed and frozen food, had been vaporised in the crash.

The length of a day here was about the same as a day on earth, but that was where all similarities ended. Even the valley where I had crash-landed, bore no earthly resemblance. The hillsides were smooth and regular and as hard as diamond. No rocks or dust, just these worm craters, and the cave.

There was no atmosphere on this planet which is why the cave was a godsend. There was enough oxygen in my tanks for only about a month of continual use. Then that was it. Because the ship had burst all its seams on impact, the air scrubbers were useless. So, no recycling.

The cave led half-a-mile downwards and ended in a cavern with bubbling thermal vents that farted out a continuous stream of stinky but breathable air which dissipated within a few yards of the vents and bled off into space. So I set up camp here, only leaving the cave to suit up and get breakfast.

What was down there that emitted this foul stench I couldn’t even guess at. The whole planet was an enigma. Well not so much a planet as a small moon covered by strangely shaped mountain ridges in shiny metallic green, with perfectly symmetrical peaks diminishing into the distance.

 

N

 

It was nothing really. A faint flicker - easily mistaken for a floater in the eye, or a misfiring synapse in the brain that left an infinitesimal flash of light on my field of vision. Then it was gone. As if a star had just winked out. I was about to dismiss it when another one flickered out and something cold crept up the back of my neck and goose pimples erupted all over my scalp.

“Reverse direction and fire thrusters now…” The tech officer, an indolent slob who never did anything without arguing, didn’t even hesitate. The barely controlled hysteria in my voice brooked no argument. “Lateral boosters to 180 degrees,” he replied.

“Get ready to fire main thrusters on full power the moment we’re aligned. And I suggest you strap yourself in.”

All the time I watched as more and more stars winked out ahead of us. There was only one logical explanation. Something big was blocking out the light and we were headed straight for it. I fired off a stream of distress drones in the general direction of home and waited in agony as we rotated to reverse-thrust position.

“Firing all main thrusters.”

It was too late and I knew it. I had no idea how big it was or how close we were, but you get an instinct about these things. With two thousand tons of ore in the cargo hold, even if we survived the massive G force of slamming on the brakes so hard, it would still take a hundred thousand miles to stop. The scanners still read nothing and the cameras didn’t have enough light to initialize. There shouldn’t have been anything out here anyway. Not according to the star chart. That was my last thought as the engines kicked in and a sledgehammer hit me in the chest. A second later I passed out.

The two thousand tons of prime ore impacting first is probably what saved my life by acting like a kind of shock absorber. My techie wasn’t so lucky. I still haven’t found his body.

So here I was. Eking out my oxygen and waiting for the end. Which was a real bitch because I had stumbled on the richest vein of Scandium since the gold rush. I was a made man. However, I was also a dead man.

 

 

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