Starfaring Adventures Page 8

  "What are you saying?" Wolfson nearly yelped. "Are you going back on your word? You can't leave me here! Steele will kill me. He'll deny everything, say it was all my idea. Even if I don't die by his hand, do you really think Space Command will let me live after what I've done?"

  "Human," the chieftess greeted Captain Quasar. Her warriors parted like plasma on a frozen tundra as she stepped between them. "You have brought only one of the culprits for justice. Where are the others?"

  "Justice? Hold on a second. What's going on here?" Wolfson yelped. "Chieftess, I warned you that these guys were headed into your village! Don't you remember me? Doctor Wolf!"

  Quasar almost snickered. A wolf...howling on a moon. Perhaps it was due to the scorching twin suns which had so far refused to set, coupled with his lack of adequate drinking water, not to mention his recent groin injury, but the Captain was feeling a bit out of sorts. He struggled to maintain his composure.

  "Chieftess, what you told me about the children is true. They do not belong to the colonists." Quasar paused dramatically. "But I'm not sure they belong to you, either."

  A shocked gasp swept over the Kolarii.

  "Explain yourself, Human." The chieftess narrowed her reptilian gaze.

  "According to this scroungy fellow, the children aren't Kolarii. Which would mean they don't belong to you. Which makes this entire matter quite confusing. And I'd like to see my men, by the way, to make sure they're all right."

  "They have not been harmed." She gestured languidly, and two of her warriors moved to summon the prisoners from a clay hut in the center of the village. It would be a while before Quasar, Hank, and Gruber were reunited. "Perhaps you would like to see our children again as well?"

  Before giving Quasar a chance to respond, the chieftess threw back her head slowly and released what sounded like a strangled shriek. Immediately, a dozen human children darted out of various huts in the village at a speed only humans could run. Half a dozen came to stand on one side of the chieftess, and half a dozen on the other, like well-behaved students on a field trip. As if they had never belonged in a human compound. As if this had been their home, all along.

  "Say hello to the Human," said the chieftess.

  "Hello, Human," the children said in unison.

  "Creepy," Wolfson muttered.

  Quasar couldn't disagree.

  "Has your companion told you what he did to these little ones?" The chieftess inclined her head toward the doctor. "No? Perhaps now would be a good time for him to do so."

  Quasar nodded, turning expectantly toward the good doctor—who had suddenly leapt forward, grabbed hold of the chieftess, and shoved a sharpened stone the size of a spearhead against her scaly throat. The warriors gasped in alarm, but there was little they could do about the situation. They were, of course, too slow.

  "Nobody's gonna railroad me!" Wolfson growled. "Stay back!" he barked at the kids who'd rushed toward the chieftess with tears in their eyes. "Creepy little monsters. Look, I'm sorry I made you, all right? It was all a big mistake. But Governor Steele kept pressuring me—"

  Three stun beams struck Wolfson at the same moment, and he lurched into the air in a frozen, awkward pose. Then he dropped to the ground unconscious, shattering the clay pot of urine he'd strapped to his waist. The children cheered, rushing to embrace the chieftess who nodded and smiled down at them, assuring them that she had been all right all along. Quasar searched the vicinity for the source of the discharged weapons and caught sight of three Kolarii warriors congratulating each other with slow pats on the back, each holding one of the stunners taken from Quasar and his team.

  The Kolarii had caught on fast. It wouldn't be long until they started wanting other forms of advanced technology to make their lives easier. Such was the way of things, after all.

  Quasar jerked his head to activate the comm link in his collar. "Commander, send down Dr. Yune in a transport pod. Set landing coordinates twenty meters outside the village."

  "What about cultural contamination, sir?" said Wan.

  "Too late to worry about that, I'm afraid." He watched the children—human for all intents and purposes—embrace their chieftess like a bunch of kids at a family reunion excited to see their dear grandmother. "Besides, what I'm seeing here isn't contamination. It's kind of sweet, actually."

  Captain Bartholomew Quasar sat at the head of the table in the Effervescent Magnitude's conference room with a pair of freeze-bags on his groin. Hank, security chief Gruber, Dr. Yune, and Commander Wan were also in attendance. The Magnitude remained in orbit of the Zeta 6 moon for the time being. What Quasar and his senior staff decided here would determine their next course of action.

  "Some sort of implant?" Commander Wan regarded the specs on the wallscreen with a skeptical gaze. They looked like the components of a twentieth-century hearing aid.

  "That's what we've been able to determine so far." Dr. Yune nodded, standing beside the screen with a laser pointer. She was a small woman with great medical know-how, and Quasar was proud to have her as a member of his crew. "Somehow, the colony physician—Dr. Wolfson—"

  "Currently sleeping in the brig," Gruber said. As chief of security, he never got to use the brig as much as he would have liked. Just being able to mention the brig in passing seemed to fill him with pride. "I checked on him—in the brig, you know. He's not going anywhere."

  Yune continued, "Wolfson managed to genetically manipulate the fauna of the moon, creating hybrids of the native species. Then, with this implant—"

  "Fauna—you mean...critters?" Gruber said.

  Yune pointed to the device on the screen. "Wolfson gave them a human physiology—an external overlay, if you will, that caused them to appear human—as well as genetic enhancements that endowed them with human-like abilities. Genius, really. If it didn't break every code of ethics in the quadrant."

  "So you're saying they aren't even children. They're not human, and they aren't Kolarii offspring." Hank grunted incredulously and crossed all four of his very hairy arms. "Humph."

  "Yet the chieftess considers them to be as much Kolarii as any other native species on that moon. They recognize their own, regardless of external morphology," Yune said. "So Dr. Wolfson's creations will live on in that village for the rest of their days, despite their obvious human traits."

  "Can't the implant be removed?" Wan frowned. "Or if not removed, then altered to give the...children...a more Kolarii appearance?"

  "We'll leave that to the Space Command bigwigs to decide. They'll make sure both Wolfson and Governor Steele answer for what they've done." Quasar paused a moment to stroke his clean-shaven and suns-burned chin. "Planning for the future is one thing. I don't fault the colony for it. Where would any species be without its progeny? Dead as the dodo bird. But what Wolfson did in creating those youngsters..." He shook his head. "It's really messed up."

  "I still don't get why they did it," said Gruber. "I mean, yeah, the colonists wanted to have kids and they couldn't. But what Wolfson did—as amazing as it is, scientifically speaking—that wouldn't do anything for their future. Alien animal creatures that look human? Not much in the way of progeny to be found there, Captain."

  "True." Quasar chewed his knuckle pensively. "But beggars can't be choosers. It's an innate desire in most humanoid species to propagate, after all. For the colonists, perhaps having children right now was all that mattered to them, and they fooled themselves into believing the young'uns would ensure the continuation of Zeta Colony 6 for years to come."

  "Regarding Dr. Wolfson and the contamination..." Wan began.

  "Right." Quasar cleared his throat. "My first thought was to hand Wolfson over to the tribe in return for our three stun weapons. But even with him in a punishment pit and our technology out of Kolarii hands, there's still the matter of Dr. Yune's transport pod landing near that village, not to mention the bioscans she performed on the children. Which is to say, the damage has been done. There's no going back. The humans and Kolarii on that moon will
no longer be able to live a completely separate existence." Quasar set his jaw. "For now, we have to decide what is to be done with Dr. Wolfson. A true Dr. Frankenstein of our time." Quasar paused, taking a moment to meet the gaze of each of his senior staff. "My vote: Kolarii punishment pit. All in favor?"

  No one besides Quasar raised a hand.

  "Very well." He sniffed. "We wait until the envoy from Space Command arrives, and we let justice take its due process and whatnot. Dismissed."

  As his staff filed out of the conference room, Captain Quasar remained seated. Only when he was sure the corridor outside would be empty, he left the room and hobbled straight to his quarters, holding both freeze-packs in place. The envoy wouldn't arrive for another day or so, and he planned to be back on his feet by then—not bow-legged. But for now, a tub full of ice-cold hydro would be just about perfect.

  "Justice," he mused as he sank into the tub with a long sigh.

  Even way out here on the sector's frontier, there was a place for the long arm of Space Command to ensure its human colonists behaved in an ethical manner with regard to the galaxy's native species. Perhaps such would not always be the case. Someday, humankind may spread far beyond the reach of Earth's interplanetary governance. Then it would be up to others to make certain justice prevailed, like marshals in Earth's Ancient West—those with the fortitude to do the right thing regardless of consequence.

  "Punishment pit," Quasar murmured to himself, then snapped wide awake as he realized he hadn't seen a single sand serpent on that moon. Disappointing. "Well, there's always next time."

  The chieftess might require the services of her favorite detective again at some point, and Captain Bartholomew Quasar knew he'd be the right human for the job.

  "Case closed," he said with a grin, winking at himself in the mirror.

  CAPTAIN QUASAR WILL RETURN

  Find out more:

  Captain Bartholomew Quasar

  Next: The first 5 episodes of

  CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW QUASAR

  and the

  Space-Time

  Displacement

  Conundrum

  A Novel

  Episode 1: The 'If-Only' Elixir

  "If only. Have two words ever expressed more profound regret? Such magnificent loss?" Bartholomew Quasar reclined in his deluxe-model captain's chair and stared up at the starlight rushing past a porthole in brilliant streaks of frosty white.

  "Huh?" His navigator, the only crew member currently on the bridge, was a very hairy biped named Hank. Not one for conversation, Hank slumped in his swivel chair at the helm with all four loose-hinged arms hovering over various controls on the blinking console. He looked like an overweight sloth suffering through a mean hangover.

  "If only!" Captain Quasar repeated with feeling. He raised a clenched fist, striking a meaningful pose. Then he frowned at the back of Hank's hairy head. "Don't you have any regrets, man?"

  At first, it didn't appear that Hank would answer the captain. This was common. It's not that Hank couldn't speak, for he could and often did; he chose his speaking moments judiciously, and the rest of the time he utilized monosyllables to—

  "Humph." That was all. For now, anyway.

  The captain sighed and returned his gaze to the stars passing by at near-lightspeed. It was enough to take a body's breath away.

  "To right a single wrong, or to salvage a missed opportunity." He shook his head. "Not that I've missed many. With the ladies, I mean." He chuckled to himself, glancing briefly at Hank.

  "Humph."

  Captain Quasar narrowed his sapphire-blue eyes and clenched his solid jaw. The muscle twitched on command. "To have that kind of power, that sort of magical ability—"

  "Magical?" Hank sounded incredulous. But tones were often garbled by Hank's thick, phlegm-coated pair of throats.

  "Yes." The captain sat up straighter. "That's what I said."

  "Humph."

  "You don't believe there to be any such thing, is that it?"

  The superior pair of very hairy shoulders shrugged up and down, but otherwise, Hank didn't respond.

  "Yeah, well, that's what they all say. That's what they said about near-lightspeed travel, isn't it? 'It's not possible. It will never work. You'll tear yourself apart.' They always think it's some kind of unbelievable hocus-pocus until somebody actually figures out how to do it! But look at us, Hank. We're perfectly fine—still in one piece!"

  "Two."

  "Ah, yes." A sheepish grin stole across Captain Quasar's chiseled features. "There are two of us now."

  "There were more."

  A complete sentence from the hairy helmsman? The captain hid his surprise. "Your point being?"

  Hank shook his head. No point.

  But he was right. Once upon a time, and not long ago, this ship, the Effervescent Magnitude, held teeming within its bowels a complete complement of 1,492 crew members—including Captain Quasar and Hank the Carpethrian biped. However, in the past six months since the captain had insisted on installing a near-lightspeed cold fusion reactor ("far-fetched magic" to the less-enlightened) and embarking upon this current quest to the mysterious Opsanus Tau system, the Effervescent Magnitude's crew had strangely—yet steadily—diminished.

  Now there were only two souls on board, and both of them sat on the bridge. All hands were on deck—all six of them, thanks to Hank's additional appendages.

  Did Captain Bartholomew Quasar ever think about his lost crew members? On occasion, yes. Did he have any idea what happened to them all? Not really, no.

  It probably had something to do with the cold fusion reactor. He didn't fully understand how it worked, only that for centuries all the eggheads back on Earth had said cold fusion was science fiction (and poor sci-fi at that). He was just glad to prove them wrong. It worked, obviously! So what if the reactor had somehow caused 1,490 members of his crew to disappear? If this current quest proved to be as fruitful as he hoped, he would be able to bring them all back anyway—as long as he made it to Opsanus Tau Prime and convinced the non-temporal natives to share their powerful elixir.

  "If only," he murmured.

  "Point zero-zero-zero-nine-two-five parsecs to destination."

  The captain broke from his reverie and frowned. "So, that's about—" He waited for Hank to fill in the blank, having never been particularly apt at unit conversions himself.

  "Two days." Hank cleared one of his throats, giving his tone an oddly harmonic quality as he added, "Give or take."

  The captain clenched both fists and gave his armrests a solid thump. "Not good enough, dammit, not good enough!" He paused to bite his lip. "I thought we were almost there!"

  "At lightspeed, we would be."

  Captain Quasar threw up his hands with a short cry. "Confounded cold-fusion near-lightspeed! How near are we, anyway? To actual lightspeed, I mean?"

  Hank's superior set of shoulders lifted, but they didn't fall. They didn't have the chance. For it was at that moment the very hairy helmsman of the Effervescent Magnitude vanished from space and time without so much as a blip of sound or a flash of light.

  "I was afraid that might happen," mused Captain Quasar.

  Then he realized he was now alone on the ship.

  With a yelp, the captain charged headlong from his chair and took the helm with both hands flying across the blinking display.

  Eventually, his nerves steadied, and he returned to his musings—now only an interior monologue:

  Two days more, and I shall have you, my potable elixir. Ah yes, magical potion manufactured in the depths of Opsanus Tau Prime, far-flung planet of mystery. My 'if only' cure-all, my 'do-over' panacea. With you, I'll never make another mistake!

  And even if he did, so what? He'd be able to undo any error.

  He laughed out loud. He couldn't stop; he was that gleeful.

  Until the cold fusion reactor went kaput, and the sudden downshift in velocity from near-lightspeed to no-speed-at-all tore the entire ship apart.

  Capta
in Bartholomew Quasar's last thoughts were, of course, only two words.

  Episode 2: The Entity Known As Steve

  Bartholomew Quasar was fairly certain he was dreaming, for he had experienced this same dream on more than one occasion: standing on a stage in the glorious United World Hall of Heroes, surrounded by adoring throngs who cheered and applauded his latest acts of valor. What had he done this time? Something spectacular, undoubtedly, something worthy of another medal or trophy or the key to some fabulous new space station or sparkling city on one of the galaxy's farthest planets.

  But no, that couldn't be right.

  For one thing, the faces smiling up at him were definitely human. There wasn't a single mottled alien to be found among them. And for another, he found that he recognized these faces. They were people he'd had dealings with in the past: United World admirals, ambassadors, and dignitaries along with their flunkies, not to mention a multitude of media personnel at the periphery, each with augmented eyes recording everything that occurred, later to be transmitted throughout the galaxy.

  This was an event he remembered well, the day his ship, the Effervescent Magnitude, first took to the stars with a complete crew complement of 1,492, including the indomitable Selene Wan, his first officer, who leaned in close to him now. Had she been standing beside him the whole time?

  Strange. In most of his other dreams, Quasar always stood onstage alone.

  "Aren't you going to say something, Captain?" Dressed in her fancy burgundy-and-black uniform with tasteful gold trim—the one she wore only to special events—she inclined her head toward the front of the stage as if it were waiting for him to step forward and take command.

  "Like a speech?" he murmured, and his voice didn't sound like he was in a dream. Usually, it came slow and groggy in dream-time, but no matter what foolish noises he made, the multitudes would always smile and applaud louder. That was usually when he'd start flying through the air over their heads, turning somersaults just because he could, and they'd stare up at him in rapturous wonder.